Ammount of time to get private license

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falconkidding

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Falcon Kidding
So it might be an Old Wives Tale but I see a lot of people throwing out 60-70 hour average and i'm sort of curious why that is. It seems if you solo by 20 hours (which I think most/many do) you should be done right around 40. Not trying to throw shade at anyone who did hit the 70 hour mark btw.

As I prep for my CFI I'm curious where people are struggling? If I get John Doe to solo at 15 hours, dual X-C for 3 hours, do the night requirements in 3 hours, do his hoodtime and towered airport stuff 5 hours, have him fly his X-C's we'll say 6 hours and we're at 32 hours with 8 hours for him to practice fine tuning stuff for checkride both with me and solo. Heck even going to 20 hours for solo and its still easily possible to get in at 40.

I might be an outlier in that me and the CFI treated each flight as what have we not done and lets go do it. Again not trying to humble brag or turn this into a dick waving thing just trying to get a better picture of why things go past 40-45 hours.
 
Stop and start is probably part of the reason; few can spend all their time just learning to fly.
Training requirements are more rigorous than they were when I got my PPL in '74.
Insurance company demands and increased liability exposure compared to 30, 40 years ago?
Even removing all of the above suspect the average will be closer to 50 hrs, not 40, to demonstrate competency in all aspects.
 
Every student is different. Some get it right away, others don't. I don't remember how many hours I had when I took my checkride. It's a pretty irrelevant number. The guy who took 40 hours has the same plastic card as the guy who took 100 hours.
 
I seem to remember back when I was teaching (35+ years ago) the national average was 57 hours. A local CFI told me recently now the average is over 70 hours, don't know if that is true or not. I do agree with Aztec Flyer that starting and stopping plays a role. Personally, back in the 70's when I was young and broke, it took me a couple of years.
 
60-70 hours is the average per the FAA, not some old wives tale. There are lots of people who aren't "ready" just because they have checked all of the XC and hour minimums. They job of a CFI isn't to get pilots through in the least amount of time, it's to train a pilot to be competent and safe. For some students, it happens by 40 hours, for others it takes 100.


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I had one instructor ride my ticket for about 5 hours until I told him to get lost. Even the flight school told him to leave for that. I told another instructor that the lesson we just finished was exactly like the lesson we did the day before that was considered satisfactory. Will that happen again? He sent me to another instructor.

I don't know if that happens a lot, but I could have shortened my time before the check ride by at least 6 hours.
 
I think part of it is where and what you fly. Someone flying out of a nontowered airport is likely going to have shorter taxi times and fewer cases of being redirected by ATC while flying than those flying out of a towered airport, which can add up to higher times before solo and higher times before private checkride. Another factor is the instructor. There may be multiple reasons why some instructors take longer than others to get a student through, some of it might be instructor inexperience or inability to communicate with the student and some of it might be as simple as time building instructors wanting to pad their logbook and wallet more. Flying more frequently helps cut down on the time spent relearning things too.

I was one of those students that was closer to average at the time of my checkride than I was to minimums. I believe all of what I posted above were factors contributing to this, with the exception of the frequency of my flights. In the end, my private rating cost more than it should have to obtain because I didn't have the nerve to tell my instructor to get lost but I did have the satisfaction of having the DPE compliment me on being the best prepared private applicant that he had seen in a long time.

I think my student's average time to checkride is around 50 hours, flying from a towered airport. Some take a little more, some take a little less, but it takes what it takes to get them to a point that they'll be a safe pilot, have confidence in themselves, and will pass a checkride.
 
Back in the day, 40 hrs was doable. Non towered field, school syllabus, flying 2-3 times a week.
Solo in 6, check ride in 42. Most students were 40-50 hrs depending on weather delays, etc..

Now, towered fields, extra taxi time, ground delays, having to fly farther away from the airport to a suitable "training area".

It would be interesting to see what hours are at the schools like UND, ER, etc.
 
I have a friend who runs a small flight school locally. We are based at a large class D north of Seattle. He keeps accurate records, averages 42.5 hrs to checkride, with 95% first pass rate. He's so confident in this he offers flat rate zero-to-checkride pricing for both PPL and IRA, published on his website.
 
BillTIZ said:
Now, towered fields, extra taxi time, ground delays, having to fly farther away from the airport to a suitable "training area".

It would be interesting to see what hours are at the schools like UND, ER, etc.
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Charlie, maybe. My flight school at a Delta was popping out PPLs in the 40's all day long. I was in the low 40's.
 
Short answer = life

Take two weeks away from your life you'll do check ride on hour 41.

Fit the training into your existing life and you'll be close to the average.
 
It took me 63 hours. I started off flying 2-3 times a week until solo and then I had to slow down to once every week or two to save money. Towards the end of training I got a nice tax rebate and bonus from work and was able to get back to 2-3 times a week and finish up. It was 13 months from first lesson to checkride. I also added a few hours by fooling around solo in the practice area when I should have been starting my dual X-C's, but I was doing it all for fun anyway so I didn't care.
 
Mid 60's here, mostly due to unexpected delay in getting medical. I incorrectly assumed the medical was related to general health.
 
Ravioli said:
Short answer = life

Take two weeks away from your life you'll do check ride on hour 41.

Fit the training into your existing life and you'll be close to the average.
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It's not really that simple. All kinds of things can happen in two weeks.

I left my job at the end of December 2015 and thought, hell I'll pick up my PPL since I have two weeks off and some extra cash.

Nope! Weather, instructor availability, plane availability, downtime for some moron who hit the prop on landing, etc. all contributed to delays.

80 hours later I had my PPL :). I had to switch planes about halfway through and start again in the new plane.

I really don't know why people are in a rush to get the license, more time on your PPL = less time on your commercial if you go that route. And who said that more time = bad?
 
why 60-70 hours?.....re-learning from stops and starts....and cockpit ground instruction. :confused:
 
60 hrs in 6 weeks. Milking the clock and my bank account.
 
52.3 hours, took from February of 1991 until May of 1992.

Highly recommend not dragging it out but I was a broke ass student working multiple jobs toward the end to do it.
 
Including Life it took me 90 hrs. 2 states, 4 schools, 5 planes, 6 instructors, and 5 years.

Nothing wrong with more instruction. Rarely do we hear about 41 hour PPLs who didn't put life on hold to grind it out. Same with minimum time IRs.

And then comes the oft asked question, is the minimum good enough for ya?

The 60 average is a good attainable goal. Don't worry how long it takes to get it, make sure you've GOT IT when you get it.
 
I had 17 hrs of solo time by time I took the check ride, had it postponed so rack up extra hours while waiting, just because you don't have certificate doesn't mean you can't fly.
 
I think I was at 76 hours. I almost got 'er done when I was stationed in S.Korea but rotated back to the states before I could finish up. Knocked the wife up when I got back, apartment and utilities were ridiculous in 1974 so I couldn't afford to fly. About a year later we moved into base housing and I finally started back, just about repeating everything I already learned and flown a year or so earlier.

So, save your money up and get it done in one take.
 
So to further narrow the topic down is there a specific post solo area any of you all struggled with or does time past 40 usually constitute a lot of "reflying" airwork and pattern stuff cause of time away/new plane/new instructor etc.
 
Just how long it takes the average student, mine typically solo around 15hrs and get their ticket just shy of 60, some take more, some take less, but it's about average.
 
Guys like @denverpilot and @Maui Cirrus CFII and @James331 who actually sign people off can offer their prospective on what takes more and less time after that first solo.

My recollection is I was safely soloed, then worked navigation and more time alone, and then worked to tighten up my procedures to what used to be called PTS standards.

Others will chime in, but I doubt my solo "three around the patch" would have gotten me PPL. Heck, I still have the occasional landing that makes me question the guy who signed me off!

But that's why we say "It's a license to learn." :)
 
I looked at my own logbook, and a took me 11 hours to solo and 60 hours to be ready for my checkride. That was quite a long time ago, I soloed got ready for my checkride at KLZU, but did some training and most of my cross country flights out of KBNA!

If it typically takes 60 hours to get a Private, what's the average amount for a Sport Pilot? 40 hours? The minimum of 20 hours seems impossibly short.
 
my school is part 61. the other day i was chatting with our chief flight instructor and asked him the average, he said about 30 to solo, 50-55 for PPL (all glass flight deck planes from 162 - 182). i assured him i would ruin his average :d.

on a different note, i have wondered about this in my sleep often... what IS the procedure for flight training?

1. show the students the maneuvers that they need to know and as soon as they can make few good landings, solo them and let them practice the stuff on their own?
OR
2. show the maneuvers, check and make sure they are comfortable, then solo etc...

i am a perfectionist and thats a big problem right now, when i hear get a ALT of 4000 and a HDG of 200, it means 4000 and 200 to me, not 4010 and 201. the other day CFI told me to broaden my own expectations and that he expects me to stay within a 100-200 ft and +- 10 degrees in heading at this point in my training.
 
Warning: I'm about to through the curve WAY off!

I had about 180 hrs by the time I got my PPL. This was mostly because of two things; The FAA, and buying a plane. First, it took 4 months to get my medical. I had several borderline things (kidney stones, a bad eye, blood pressure, and pre-diabetic) Unfortunately, I filed just as the government shutdown for a month. I had all my primary instruction done before I ever soloed! Then, I bought a plane. It took me awhile to get used to it, and get to the point that I was as comfortable in the new plane as I was in the previous rental. And then, oh boy, I had a plane to fly whenever I wanted. I flew it constantly! Then I went to get my checkride, only to find out that I had misunderstood the FAA's language (go figure) and had to take a medical checkride to prove my eyesight was good enough to fly! Yup, there goes a few more months of waiting. And then, on the day of the medical checkride, the airworthiness inspector hits me up with a bunch of little ******** that MUST be corrected before I can take the medical checkride. (Like a slightly-frayed shoulder strap in the back seat. Really?) There goes another two months (and $4k) while the plane gets fixed and I wait for another appt. Finally passed that with flying colors. Then it's a two month wait to get my PPL checkride. And yes, I flew the hell out of my plane while waiting through all of this BS. Total calendar time was 13 months, and I probably had about 150 hrs of solo time by my checkride.

Of course, my instructor said that I was ready at around 50 hrs, so I guess this is all meaningless. I didn't mind all the extra practice though. It was always about being safe and confident, and it still is.
 
A lot of factors go into how long it takes someone...
- Money
- Time
- Weather
- Frequency of flights/lessons
- Towered field/Un-towered field
- How busy the airport is
- How fast a learner a person is
- How much you study at home
- Instructor quality
- Plane availability
- Life... did you have to move? Change schools? Switch instructors?
- Medical... some people have to burn more air time while waiting for their medical to go through

The list can go on and on.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
 
BigBadLou said:
Oh no, not another pizzing contest thread! *rolleyes*

:popcorn:
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IDT anybody has yet. I was just curious because the "average" solo time at 15-20 hours wasn't meshing with the average of 60-70 for checkride completion to me.
 
falconkidding said:
IDT anybody has yet. I was just curious because the "average" solo time at 15-20 hours wasn't meshing with the average of 60-70 for checkride completion to me.
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I solo'd at 14 hours. Checkride at 58 hours. That 44 hours between solo and checkride included 21 hours of solo (about half of which was just messing around). The remaining dual time (23 hours) was short/soft field, vor nav/hoodwork, x-country and checkride prep.
 
Ravioli said:
Guys like @denverpilot and @Maui Cirrus CFII and @James331 who actually sign people off can offer their prospective on what takes more and less time after that first solo.
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Welllllll... I'm a newbie CFI so I haven't signed off anyone to do jack yet. LOL. I

'm also still waiting around on scheduling of my CFI to do the single engine add on stuff, so all I could sign someone off to do is solo in a multi, and no insurance company allows that anyway. Ha.

They get to "simulated solo acting as PIC" or something stupid like that. I haven't even bothered to ask yet since it's not my twin and I'm not on anyone's payroll or insurance.

I suspect the multi teaching will be the hardest thing to get started on, actually, until I've flown various twins at clubs and earned the right to teach in some of them with their chief pilots. FAA of course will let me teach in them, but insurance companies rule the multi engine game.

I'll be honest, it hasn't even come up in discussion yet. I'll get into that line of questions with local clubs and what not after the SE stuff is on the ticket. From what I hear it goes like this... "l'd like to be checked out by your chief pilot to teach in your aircraft, I'll maintain my club membership and I won't expect to be fed any students or take away from your full timers. If I have a student I'll just bring them in and I'll show up for your instructor safety meetings and all that."

That's the SE part. The ME part supposedly right now is somewhat different because many places have lost a lot of ME instructors to bigger and better things and they can't hold on to ME folks with any significant PIC time, they move on, so they're a little more interested in some help that isn't going to disappear but they also have to send students to their full timers. That's the local rumor mill anyway. We shall see.

The very real possibility is that I'll end up not doing a whole hell of a lot with the MEI. Hard to say. Like I've told a number of folks, "I'll be here!" LOL. If the paying jobs keep sucking away MEIs at the rate they have for a while now, I suspect I'll be busy soon enough without pushing it too hard. I like the twin stuff and would be happy to teach it, but it'll all depend on circumstances around here more than anything.

Until then and the SE stuff, no input from here. I'll let ya know once I've let some primary students try to kill me. Haha. :)

Which reminds me, I really should finish deciding what insurance I want to have and all that crap. Ha. I've been working at the "real" job to focus much on it lately with the big scheduling delay. It's likely I won't even be able to do the SE rides and the II ride until late Feb, early March due to some of my own schedule conflicts that are now going to bump things as soon as my CFI frees himself up. Haha.

I'm on the reeeeeeealy long path to actually teaching, it would appear. Wasn't the plan, but the plan never survives first contact with the enemy. :)
 
Took me 56 hours. I was held back a little because my instructor was fresh and I was her first ever student. She was nervous letting me go. I was down in Douglas, AZ so there is not airspace, ground time, routing argument for me there. Funny thing, I saw here a week ago. I was walking through the FBO and she said my name. Didn't recognize her at first then it clicked. She was my instructor in 2007. She now flies a Citation X for XOJet. We met far away from where either of us went to school or grew up. Luck of the draw meeting in the exact right ten seconds in time!
 
Ravioli said:
Including Life it took me 90 hrs. 2 states, 4 schools, 5 planes, 6 instructors, and 5 years.

Nothing wrong with more instruction. Rarely do we hear about 41 hour PPLs who didn't put life on hold to grind it out. Same with minimum time IRs.

And then comes the oft asked question, is the minimum good enough for ya?

The 60 average is a good attainable goal. Don't worry how long it takes to get it, make sure you've GOT IT when you get it.
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Now that's what I call persistence!
 
paflyer said:
You must have made an impression.
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Her words were, "You were a very . . . studied student." She hesitated to think of a good word. Haha. I am sure I made some kind of impression. I recall us both being very stubborn. There were four students that started that semester with her as an instructor and I was the only one to stick with her through the semester. We had our troubles but we both made it where we wanted to go. It was a pleasant surprise to see her.
 
In part, this also depends on CFI/school and their plan of action. Sometimes what happens is that the student is mostly ready at 45-50 mark, but then spends time tying up "loose ends" and in test prep.

Personally, i restarted twice(once before soloing), soloed at about 20 hours. Then i spend lots of time flying solo(I had a good deal on flight time :) ). Took another year to actually get PPC. At 50h, i thought i covered everything... then came hood, xc, test prep and evaluation. That pushed my time up quite a lot. 85h before PPC.

This is why it is important to have money, time and a plan(CFI) all ready if you want to get it done in timely matter and at reasonable price)
 
Soloed in 15ish hrs, PPL mid-60 hrs. 13 months total.

Causes?
-Work
-Weather
-Life (wife, kids, lawn work, friends, vacations, etc)
-Scheduling plane rental and instructor at a busy FBO with the above 3 factors

Most times I flew once a week. A few times twice a week. I just got rusty and lost too much between flights so it took longer to "stick". I took 3 months off to reconsider life after a mission trip too.

I'm sure if I flew consistently 2-3 times a week, I'd have hit the 45 hr mark. Having said that, for me spreading it out over 13 months (65 hrs) gave me confidence that my rust was light and correctable with some practice after a short hiatus.

Steep turns, S turns, turns around a point needed more practice after time off when I was an early student. I worked a lot in the end to polish stuff up for the check ride; probably practiced more than I needed cuz I liked it. My XCs were longer than they needed to be. It adds up.
 
falconkidding said:
IDT anybody has yet. I was just curious because the "average" solo time at 15-20 hours wasn't meshing with the average of 60-70 for checkride completion to me.
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Okay, you'll make me jump on the bandwagon and join the pizzing contest then. Remember, it's your fault now! :)
I soloed after 5 lessons and went to my checkride with 40.2 in my logbook.

Causes:
- owned my airplane so I could fly anytime I could
- had a private instructor, didn't have to beg for one at a busy flight school
- had plenty of previous experience flying with friends
- had studied ahead of time and passed written
- am an engineer so aircraft systems and physics of flight are simple concepts to me

It still took several months to finish my PPL, mostly due to bad weather. I wanted to be done in 2 months but it took 4. :(
 
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