I’m a flight instructor. Not full-time, I do it because I enjoy it.
And I’m not one of the many pilots who go around routinely beating up on the FAA at any opportunity. I understand that careful oversight of an important area doesn’t always allow for good public relations.
But…
My bullshit meter has totally pegged over my last two dealings with the FAA, and I can no longer remain silent.
I’m a teacher by trade. It’s my strength as an instructor, as my students often tell me. So when reviewing a student’s written test recently I realized something was a little screwy.
When a student takes the aeronautical knowledge exam they get back a printed page with their score and the subject areas where they missed questions. But those subject areas are very broad, and it’s difficult to figure out exactly where the student went wrong. There’s got to be a way of finding out which questions they missed, right? Even the most inept institution should know enough to give specific feedback for optimal learning, right?
So I mentioned this to an FAA inspector. “Why can’t we see which questions they missed?” I asked.
Response: “Because we don’t want CFIs to teach to the test.”
Really. How interesting. So then…
WHY DO YOU PUBLISH THE ENTIRE QUESTION BANK!!!
:smack: :smack: :smack:
That’s right. The FAA publishes every possible question they can ask on the exam, right there on the web site.
To keep us from teaching to the test, the answer is of course to prevent us from conducting a useful review of a COMPLETED test. Oh, and by the way, that review is mandatory. :rolleyes:
Next up is paperwork, for which the FAA is legendary. The old adage is that only when the paperwork equals the weight of the aircraft may you legally fly.
But wait! We have a new solution - IACRA, the new online way of submitting student applications for pilot licenses! I’m good with computers, so this should be great…
Wrong. It’s the worst system of it’s type I’ve ever seen. You need multiple logins, user names, passwords, extra FTN numbers, yadd yadda yadda. And that’s before you start entering information. If you enter the correct information in the wrong order or the wrong spot there’s often no way of knowing what you did wrong. Very non-intuitive. And here’s the best part:
The flight examiners usually tell me that if I’m using IACRA to bring along a paper application too in case there are problems.
So to use this time-saving convenience, all I have to do is DOUBLE THE WORK!!!
We pilots are all familiar with the pace at which the FAA is usually able to adapt and fix problems - something approximating geologic time. But I’m starting to question even the basic ability of this agency to ensure oversight of anything. *
- That was the polite version of this post. Here’s how I was going to summarize my concerns about the FAA in the first draft:
Asshole, fuckwit, mother-raping, goat-sodomizing, half-bred, limp dicked, mouth breathing, genetically misaligned crotch cannibals!!! All of them!!!