Your post is pretty similar to my busted PPL checkride experience, with one minor distinction: The disorganized moron who owned the plane that I intended to fly and did not have adequate logs for the checkride, was me. 😂 Here are details of what happened to me in the hopes of helping you and anyone reading this.

I showed up to my checkride not realizing—although I did checklist this and think otherwise—that my two-year transponder inspection had expired about 5 days previous. As a new plane owner I had read the annual log entry (I personally attended and watched the annual) and believed that the transponder had been inspected that day. It had not been. This taught me a very valuable lesson about how thoroughly one must understand an aircraft’s maintenance logs if you’re going to (a) own it, or (b) use it for a checkride. I’ve since passed the PPL oral after beating myself up for my sloppy approach and lack of complete understanding of these airworthiness requirements. My second attempt was a breeze and the DPE complimented my organization.

I am not calling you sloppy and, in fact, you’re definitely more innocent than I am because you weren’t the owner/operator. But, you still had the same shitty outcome I did, so I don’t know how much consolation that is. Is your flight school sketchy? It absolutely is. But it’s still you who got hosed. So lesson #1 I would offer is that a flight school might make this easy on you or it might set you up for failure, and it unfortunately is on YOU to determine which, on a timely basis. A cardinal rule of aviation that I’ve learned the hard way is: Trust no one and trust nothing. Given your massive financial investment in getting to an IFR checkride, I would literally be an asshole to my flight school in demanding full and complete access to the checkride aircraft’s full maintenance logs ONE WEEK PRIOR to the checkride. Not one day prior. A full week, at least. If they hem and haw, I’m going to get in their faces. It’s your money at stake. A lot of it. And they happily received it from you.

Lesson #2 would be to use the week-prior access to do a complete audit of the logs and duplicate exactly what the DPE will do to confirm airworthiness. The one week time frame is critical because your audit may reveal a discrepancy or missing log item. You now have barely 7 days to either correct the discrepancy, or select another plane. But if you select another plane, you’ll need to again audit the maintenance logs—and now you might only have 6 days left instead of 7.

I’m sorry this happened to you my friend, just as it did to me. I will say that this letdown did not go in vain because I now understand things about the FARs, my plane, my logs, and my responsibilities as a pilot that I did not appreciate on that first attempt. You’ll get em next time so good luck.

It’s not inconsistent at all. The PIC has no way of knowing what his intentions were. It sounds like he just assumed. Meanwhile this pilot had no history of suicidal ideation whatsoever, and no prior suicide attempts. This is not adding up to a suicide and is not consistent with suicidal behavior. Rather…

“the PIC stated that, before departing the airplane, the SIC became visibly upset and apologetic, and reported feeling sick. His actions to increase ventilation in the cabin, which included opening the window and lowering the ramp, as well as his hurried departure from his seat, are consistent with an attempt to address increasing nausea symptoms and a desire to not throw up in the cockpit. However, the SIC made an unsafe decision to run to the rear of the cabin with the ramp in a fully lowered position, as he likely had not previously been in the cabin in flight with the ramp down. It is possible in his haste he lost his footing when encountering the area of the ramp and inadvertently fell from the airplane. Weather sounding and radar data supported the potential for windshear and turbulence activity, and the PIC reported that there had been moderate turbulence during the flight.”

I dealt with a cross country ferrying scenario too for my plane. Join the Facebook pilot groups of either Florida or Virginia, and find someone to ferry it that way. Young CFIs and commercial pilots are eager to step up. Verify their ratings. Verify your insurance will cover this flight and the pilot. There’s really not much more to it than that, other than expenses and fees of course. It is a bit harder to find pilots who have 182 experience. But as you know, 182s aren’t hugely complicated to fly. If someone has the correct HP endorsement, has done recent HP flying with a constant speed prop, and is at least familiar with 172s, I’d feel comfortable.

And yeah, since you’re using 30 flaps, you’re going to consistently have too much energy and overshoot, because 30 flaps has you coming in at a flatter descent angle. The point of the 40 flaps recommendation in the POH is to provide a steeper descent angle.

If the POH says 40 flaps, why is your CFI having you using 30 flaps? I’ve repeatedly run into this problem with CFIs also. They’re not reading the damn ACS. Here’s what the ACS says you’ll be graded on for short field landings:

PA.IV.F.S11 Use manufacturer’s recommended procedures for airplane configuration and braking.

I read the report. We will never know for sure but to me it seems likely he accidentally slipped, after having an emotional panic attack due to the hard landing. I am so sorry for the family—it sounds like he was a great guy.

Not a big fan of the whole “let a jury calmly decide innocence or guilt before we smoke American citizens” thing eh?

Reasons I do not want to be near fireworks in a Cessna at night: (1) degrading my night vision, and (2) risk of sparking a fire. Don’t forget about the 300 or so pounds of gas you’re flying around.

My dream for my plane one day is to strip the paint completely and polish the chrome.

Prosecutor here. To prosecute laser perps you need a solid law enforcement infrastructure. In many though not all US states that includes a joint task force with coordinated participation from the FAA, FBI, and local/state police. It’s usually local police who provide the choppers that are regularly in use, which can be quickly and easily deployed when the FAA reports a laser sighting. The perp will then laser strike the chopper and boom, you’ve got charges of assault on a law enforcement officer. Mexico is basically fighting to stay alive right now. Whatever capacity it has, its resources are insufficient to do the above in a city like Juarez. Mexico City might be a different story.

Well, I said “like” 3 seconds. I just watched a random GoPro clip of one of my takeoffs and the literal timing was 5 seconds from throttle to being in the air, on a hot Phoenix morning, from a paved and flat runway. So 3 seconds is probably accurate in cool temps. I use 20 flaps and a short field takeoff as SOP. I use ground effect to hit 70 mph and then hit 10 flaps. My model year of Skylanes are famously light, narrow bodied, and rocket into the air in seconds.

7500’ with wet grass and a tailwind… yikes. If I ever am doing a takeoff in those conditions, I hope I’ve bought a STOL kit and bush tires by then.

Yup, the 75/50 rule is useless for my vintage 182. I’m in ground effect off the ground around 55 mph which is like 3 seconds after I hit the throttle. If I’m on the ground and still not in the air by the 50% runway location, I’ll know that something is afoot.

Yup, it happens. I meant no judgment with my question. I really was just curious and I’m guessing the answer is that he didn’t adjust.

With my “flying CFIs” who tried to teach me ground, I experienced the same. Great human beings, I owe all of ‘em beers for teaching me how to fly airplanes, but they were not stellar in the classroom. So stop spending money on them for ground stuff, and do spend money on a good ground instructor. How to find one: No tricks I know of for this one. Just use your judgment and intuition.

What happened there, a hard landing? Their 3 hour maneuvers session seems like lunacy to me, especially on a day when it was 113° F. But what do I know.

I’m a white collar guy with a graduate degree but just hear me out for a second. Despite my education I was never a highly disciplined student. The topics that I really loved, I did well in. Everything else, I suffered from poor grades. I adjusted my strategy to account for that, which is how I made it. When it came to the ground school material for PPL, I have suffered. I failed a stage check. And I also failed a checkride on the oral, before later passing. So we aren’t necessarily that different in terms of the struggle.

How did I eventually get over the hump? They key for me was finding a pretty good ground instructor. No offense to the young bucks out there who are CFIs, all of whom that I’ve flown with have been superb FLIGHT instructors by the way. But teaching is a craft just like welding is. You know welding. Teachers know teaching. And the FAA’s coursework for becoming a CFI is pretty shoddy on the “how to be a good teacher” part. If a CFI is not a natural born teacher by nature, and/or doesn’t have a background in teaching classroom methods, they will not be able to unconfuse you much while you’re trying to get this material.

My point: Consider looking for a separate ground instructor solely for ground. I had a very good one who charged much less per hour than CFIs do for flight time. And doing sessions with him was easy because we used Zoom. It’s a cost, yes, but the cost is higher if you’re spending ground time with a bad teacher, and/or you do a ton of work to get to a checkride and then fail the checkride.

I was a student at Sierra Charlie. They have excellent instructors including the one who got me mostly to solo. One day I show up and he was gone, fired, and replaced by a new instructor just like that. We texted later on and being gracious I didn’t want to ask specifically why they fired him, but now I wonder if it was something as stupid as what they did to your son. I want to emphasize here that this instructor they fired was one of the best pilots I’ve flown with despite his young age, and had meticulously safe habits.

No advice here, just a question: You didn’t mention your airspeed. Did you increase it on final given the gust factor?

Not a big deal really. I prefer waking up at 4am like all normal Phoenicians in July, not just to fly but to hike, jog, etc. If I absolutely have to fly mid day, yeah I get sweaty but with my open Cessna door while taxiing the prop is really not so bad. Soon it will be October!

It’s the ADA, not the AMA. Since you hate the law and think it’s bullshit, at least pay attention to what it’s called. Anyway, the ADA doesn’t require any airline to subject other passengers or your plane to this hygenically unsafe situation, so trashing the rights of all disabled people through this one story is completely uncalled for. You also point out that CS wanted YOU to “pull the trigger,” but I guess you really meant the chief pilot and/or you in conjunction. Either way, why can’t you and/or the chief pilot just make the proper executive decision and no-go this passenger, again, for hygiene reasons alone? He’s the chief pilot. Not CS. They apparently made that clear to you two. You still waffled on what to do. And then, after refusing to make a proper executive decision, you write up a post in which you fat shame this dying man’s family. Just who in the hell do you think you are?

This is a weird ass post. I can’t decide what stinks more: the visuals of that customer or your personality and lack of decisiveness as a captain.

I’m sure your job is frustrating but this doesn’t detract from the point: for some reason most chief prosecutors are politicians—I’ve never understood why that is a good idea—and anyway it’s politicians elected by voters who pass these laws. I think “the war on drugs” is overblown too. But I didn’t close my eyes and vote for Nixon-Reagan.

I’m a prosecutor. Yeah, some prosecutors err. But you do realize that prosecutors are only able to enforce laws that are passed by legislators, right? And who votes for these legislators, usually giving very little thought to their various policy positions on the issues? We the people.

I don’t see what’s wrong with discussing it.

I bought a C182 and believe I will fly it for the rest of my life. I live in mountainous terrain so the option of landing safely (survivably, at least) on a random patch of dirt 200 feet long is attractive to me. I’m a low hours pilot so the 50 knots stall speed is nice. Having 2 exit doors is also nice for my loved ones. I’ll install airbag equipped seatbelts soon. I could install a parachute if I really wanted to and was flying nighttime IFR a lot—or I could just limit myself to safer conditions. I’ll decide after getting my instrument rating. Needless to say, my main mission is safety which may not be your priority. I’d maybe feel differently if I was former Air Force with 20,000 hours behind me.