Pilots coming off FAA practical tests will get to grade the performance of the Designated Pilot Examiners grading them starting later this year. The FAA has published a proposal to survey all those who take a checkride on the conduct of the DPEs, private citizens who conduct the examinations under the authority of the FAA. Comments are now being accepted until Feb. 27. The agency says the survey will consist of about a dozen questions and will be given to all pilots who take a practical exam with a DPE. Participation is voluntary. The FAA estimates about 49,000 pilots will fill out the survey, which will take about seven minutes to complete.
The survey was mandated by the 2024 FAA Reauthorization, which requires the FAA to deploy “a survey system to track the performance and merit of such examiners.” The agency says the questions will have Yes or No responses and will assess the “DPEs’ level of professionalism; the suitability of the exam environment; the content of the exam; and the duration of the ground portion and the flight portion of the exam. The FAA will use the information collected to track the performance and merit of DPEs.” The summary of the Federal Register document is below.
I am all for better DPE oversight and a more consistent checkride. But if the FAA turns this post-ride survey into a scorecard, it will backfire. DPEs are already the choke point. Spook even a few and you get fewer ride slots, longer waits, more travel, and higher fees.
Even if the fee stays the same on paper, the applicant pays in aircraft time, instructor time, hotels, rental cars, and weather discontinuances. Been there.
Use the survey like quality control, not Yelp.
Agreed!
That is a valid argument and would carry more weight if the FSDOs would hold their DPEs accountable to minimum activity levels. There are too many DPEs who take advantage of a surge in demand and then apply for and obtain their designee status for personal reasons, such as a tick on the resume, and then sit idle. There is a lot of talk about the appearance of a DPE shortage, but no one ever asks the question of how many are actually exercising their privileges to a minimum level.
Pass – Great Review
Fail – Lousy Review
It takes more science than Yes/No answers to get a meaningful result in these circumstances.
All my experiences over the years have been great, with one exception. A black examiner at an unnamed FSDO flat out told me he was not going to pass a white applicant. His boss sorted that out quickly, but it was a reminder that as a species, humans still have a long way to go.
Yes or No answers to questions are simply too binary. Kind of like ratings for streaming movies, not enough scale gradation for a more nuanced critique. I get that maybe one wants things short and simple, no room for an 11-page treatise for each answer, but yes-or-no seems too abbreviated.
Why don’t we just make this scoring system easier for everyone and create a “U.S. Government Social Behavior Score” ???
It’s only fair that the DPE scores their applicant also. Just a simple 1 to 10 score. Let’s try this out… From now on everyone reading a comment instead of thumbs Up or Down they click a number between 1 thru 10. Then after your name will be a score for us to judge you by like ‘KlausM-3.5’. Once you get to 3.0 you’re kicked off. 😐
Why doesn’t this — likewise — apply to Designated Mechanic Examiners (DME)? Or, how’s about Check Airmen? They’re discriminating.
Idiocy redefined. I guess there is no bottom in this game.
This is interesting…and it gets me thinking.
1. It appears this wasn’t an FAA “idea”, but something mandated by politicians signing the authorization act.
2. You can click “Yes” or “No” a whole lot of times in 7 minutes…
3. As someone with a background in stats, you can still get a lot of data from “yes” and “no” when enough people give you answers to a LOT of questions. Just remember that most of our political polls are “yes” or “no”. Sure people can lie, which causes most of the problems, but binary questions don’t automatically eliminate usefulness. As Raf says however, HOW it is used is what can be the problem.
Finally, a story I think is humorous (your results may vary). If the FAA did this only because they HAD to…
When I was in college several decades ago I had a professor who told us about a previous teaching job he had, where a new Dean of the school walked in and mandated that going forward, every student must write a research paper. My professor asked “why” and the Dean basically said, “Because I’m in charge now and I said so.”
My professor related that he pushed back because he hated both the papers and grading them. Eventually he push back to the point where the Dean told him, “Your students do the paper or you can look for a new job.”
Monday morning my professor walks into his class and says, “Going forward, there is a new requirement. You must write a research paper, minimum 25 pages long, double-spaced, with footnotes, and a minimum of five reference sources to support your findings.”
Then he dropped the last bit…
“The paper will be worth one half of one percent of your final grade…”
He told us that any student paying attention didn’t write the paper, and if someone turned one in, the prof gave them an A+ without reading the thing.
So…If the FAA did this only because they HAD to for the funding bill…maybe someone in the org figured out that “yes” and “no” was the equivalent of 1/2 of 1%…