How GougeHub collects, reviews, and presents checkride data.
Reports are submitted directly by pilot applicants after completing a checkride with a Designated Pilot Examiner. Submission is voluntary and self-initiated.
GougeHub is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the FAA, any FSDO, or any DPE. Reports reflect the individual experiences of pilot applicants and are not official FAA records or evaluations.
Every report is individually reviewed and approved by the site operator — Andrew Gray, CFI-II — before publication. This is the platform's primary quality gate.
Reports are not approved if they are incoherent or clearly fabricated, contain personally identifying information about the applicant or third parties, do not reflect a genuine first-hand checkride account, or violate the platform's community guidelines.
No report from a specific DPE is suppressed for reasons of content alone. Negative, critical, or unflattering accounts are subject to the same review standard as positive ones.
The database contains submitted reports only — not a record of all checkrides conducted by a given DPE. Submission volume varies by examiner, region, and rating. DPEs with fewer reports have a less complete picture.
Statistics are observational. They describe what applicants report experiencing during their checkride. They are not compliance determinations, FAA findings, or assessments of a DPE's professional conduct.
All framing follows this standard: what applicants report experiencing, not what the DPE did or failed to do.
Starting in 2026, pilots submitting reports may answer structured questions about examiner patterns — how the oral was structured, whether W&B was verified with a calculator, duration of the oral and flight, and similar behavioral indicators.
A stat line is only displayed when two or more pilots have answered that specific question for a given examiner. The confidence label scales with sample size:
| Responses | Label shown |
|---|---|
| 1 | Preliminary insight (1 report) |
| 2–4 | Early reports (N) suggest… |
| 5+ | Based on N reports |
Older reports were backfilled using AI inference from report text. Backfilled fields are treated identically to directly submitted fields; the source of the inference is not distinguished in the display.
Pass/fail rates per examiner are intentionally not displayed.
Pilots who do not pass a checkride are statistically less likely to submit a report than pilots who do pass. This self-selection bias makes any pass rate derived from submitted reports misleading, regardless of sample size. Displaying those figures would present an inflated pass rate as if it were representative data.
Examiner summaries are generated by Claude AI (Anthropic) from the text of pilot-submitted reports in the database. The AI synthesizes patterns across reports into a brief narrative description of the examiner's style.
Summaries are reviewed for factual accuracy and tone by Andrew Gray, CFI-II before publication. Summaries reflect the content of submitted reports and are updated as new reports are approved. They do not represent an independent investigation or FAA determination.
If a Designated Pilot Examiner believes a report published about them contains a factual inaccuracy regarding ACS standards or examination procedures, they may submit a written rebuttal via the contact form.
Rebuttals are reviewed by the site operator. If a factual error is substantiated, a note is appended to the relevant DPE page. Student privacy is protected — student identities are not disclosed under any circumstances, including in response to DPE inquiries.
Questions about this methodology, data accuracy concerns, or rebuttal requests: contact form.