Average of 72 hours to check ride

Which is "worse":

Failing the checkride with low hours

or

Passing the checkride on the first try, but with 40 hours to solo and 90 hours to checkride (and no excuses meaning I had one plane, one CFI, one flight school).
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
Which is "worse":

Failing the checkride with low hours

or

Passing the checkride on the first try, but with 40 hours to solo and 90 hours to checkride (and no excuses meaning I had one plane, one CFI, one flight school).
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Wait, are you trying to describe me?:hairraise::hairraise::hairraise:
 
8.3 to solo, 53.8 for checkride, but I probably built 10 extra hours before the checkride when my DPE cancelled on me several times. I'd like to think that I was able to solo so quick because I'm awesome, but it's probably because my CFI was sick of me.
 
There are a lot of variables in how long it takes...... But honestly I think what matters is that you kept at it, finished it and continue to learn. We all learn differently and at different rates..but we all learn.
I flunked my first check ride for the PP and then flew a lot for about another year before I was willing to test again. so? I got it done and kept going. Of course I was lucky because I owned my own plane and could fly when I wanted. By the time I went for my ride it was a no brainer.
However, I am learning so much more now trying to be a good CFI.

And, to that end, I'd like to ask what you all think constitutes attributes of a good CFI? I think I'll start another thread... We have all heard what's wrong but I'd like to hear what's right.
 
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Jeanie said:
There are a lot of variables in how long it takes...... But honestly I think what matters is that you kept at it, finished it and continue to learn. We all learn differently and at different rates..but we all learn.
I flunked my first check ride for the PP and then flew a lot for about another year before I was willing to test again. so? I got it done and kept going. Of course I was lucky because I owned my own plane and could fly when I wanted. By the time I went for my ride it was a no brainer.
However, I am learning so much more now trying to be a good CFI.

And, to that end, I'd like to ask what you all think constitutes attributes of a good CFI? I think I'll start another thread... We have all heard what's wrong but I'd like to hear what's right.
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Jeanie, I don't know how to find it (when I search things stop and don't go back as far as I'd like) - but I had many CFI threads both here and on Student Pilot which might help you. Sure I listed what was wrong but it also made people tell stories of CFIs that were good. Let me see what I can find, send me a link to your new thread and I'll put the stuff in there.
 
67 or so here, six and a half months, two CFI's and a somewhat eccentric DPE (I wrote about those experiences in the studentpilot forum).

I swear it felt just as great as if I had done it in 40.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
Jeanie, I don't know how to find it (when I search things stop and don't go back as far as I'd like) - but I had many CFI threads both here and on Student Pilot which might help you. Sure I listed what was wrong but it also made people tell stories of CFIs that were good. Let me see what I can find, send me a link to your new thread and I'll put the stuff in there.
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I'm working on transitioning to helicopter. At the start of the last lesson, the instructor announced he just flew a demo flight with a guy who, without previous experience, hovered perfectly during his first hour. Now, here I am, hour 7, and I still haven't got a stable hover..... Well, that's another story.
I had 120 hours before I took my checkride. What isn't known in knowing that is I started at 38 with a growing family. I flew with different instructors, in CA, NV, NC, and MA, and spent 13 years at it. I soloed at 13 hours in a c152 but switched schools and airplanes PA28 soon after;having another solo milestone in a warrior. Afterwards, I often only flew 10 hours a year; just enough to look like a student, especially with solo trips to OWD. In '03, I challenged myself (and so did a friend) to finish up and that I did.
The biggest problem overall is all of the instructors presumed someone else covered some of the material. Just to reenforce this, on my prep ride (day before) for the checkride, the CFI called for a climbing left turn to a stall... Gee, I NEVER did that before.
Stats are great but they are clinical in nature. They do not tell the truth nor the story. You really have to understand what is going on.
 
There's NO way I'd ever tell one student about another student's performance. The most I've done is to say something like "dont feel bad, everyone does that at first", or show him my own row of diamond-shaped scars.

I like to use a syllabus, and I liked the feature of the Jepp folder that let you score all sorts of stuff on every lesson. The student could see where he'd made progress in things like judgement or assertiveness even when he felt like he flew poorly. Never give a student a good grade he didn't earn, never give him a bad grade without both advice on how to do better AND expressing confidence that he WILL do better next time.

But I'm a n00b, so take that for what it's worth.
 
Sometimes I think it'd be fun to play "new student" on an unsuspecting instructor and see how long it takes.
 
Tristar said:
Sometimes I think it'd be fun to play "new student" on an unsuspecting instructor and see how long it takes.
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Do you really think you could make yourself bad like taxi off center, use your hands, pull the wrong stuff, ask dumb questions?
 
Oh I could ask dumb questions, I do that all the time! :D

Doing silly student things is something I'd have to concentrate on but it'd sure be fun to try! That's half the fun of teaching CFI though is playing "dumb student."

I remember some of mine though...trying to do power off stalls for power on stalls...not being able to find point B on an XC...and I couldn't land centerline to save my life! I was just so happy to be on the ground and people wanted centerline? Haha well, thankfully like everyone else, that goes away.
 
Tristar said:
Sometimes I think it'd be fun to play "new student" on an unsuspecting instructor and see how long it takes.
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We did that to a CFI once whose ego generally rose 30 minutes before the sun. We found another instructor from an acro flight school a couple airports away to come in and be the fresh faced newbie. This kid was young and looked the part too.

The egocentric CFI found a new line of work pretty soon thereafter.
 
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Initial Solo @ 7.2 Hrs

Fired up the engine on my check ride @ 40.1 Hrs on 07/22/2015.

About 3.5 months total training time, while attending A&P School. My power plant O&Ps were the next morning after my check ride. It was all a fun type of stressful.


G1000 172
 
Huh, I've always found 60 to be a good number for averages, it's the number I tell folks, legal min is 40, average is 60hrs or so.

Also depends on the student, a guy who skydives for a living is going to take a lot less time than a engneer.
 
James331 said:
Huh, I've always found 60 to be a good number for averages, it's the number I tell folks, legal min is 40, average is 60hrs or so.

Also depends on the student, a guy who skydives for a living is going to take a lot less time than a engneer.
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So what makes engineers slow? I was my CFI's first student, pushed hard and was impatiently waiting for my checkride at 52 hours. I was badly overprepared.

--Hank, BSME, MSE; PP-ASEL, IA

P.S.--I was working full time as a Manufacturing Engineer and getting my Master of Engineering degree, while taking flight lessons on weekends. It was a good kind of busy.
 
Hank S said:
So what makes engineers slow?
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Well, first off they're born that way, and then they refuse to wear their hockey helmets to school and it all goes downhill from there. They have pocket protectors to assure that girls won't damage their hearts, but without the helmet....:lol:
 
Just checked my logbook. Got mine in 2013 with 39.8 hours and about 3 hours of simulator time at Redbird Skyport (it was a fixed price for the PPL, no matter how many hours it took me).

All was great until the first time I took a cross-country flight by myself. I didn't even know how to fuel up the plane. They never taught that. I wish I had _more_ hours of training.
 
camel said:
Just checked my logbook. Got mine in 2013 with 39.8 hours and about 3 hours of simulator time at Redbird Skyport (it was a fixed price for the PPL, no matter how many hours it took me).

All was great until the first time I took a cross-country flight by myself. I didn't even know how to fuel up the plane. They never taught that. I wish I had _more_ hours of training.
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It's seems that most instructor miss the fueling part. Mine did, too. Still haven't had to fuel myself, but I'm confident I can ;-)
 
Jim Logajan said:
Went to a FAAST safety seminar last night and the speaker made an almost off-hand comment on the current statistics on how long students are now taking to get to the point of their check ride: national average is now about 72 hours.

And allegedly, only 2 people in the entire nation last year managed to pass their check ride near the 40 hour minimum.
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43 hours going into my checkride in 1999. And only because my instructor said the DE frowned upon people with 40 hrs... And took me 17 to solo...
 
Tristar said:
Sometimes I think it'd be fun to play "new student" on an unsuspecting instructor and see how long it takes.
Click to expand...

What if the CFI couldn't tell? What if you went the whole lesson and they kept reassuring you you'll get better. What if you kept trying harder and harder to to do better but they never got the joke?

So then the lesson ends and they look at you dead pan and ask when you'd like to schedule your next lesson and offer to sell you a log book...now what?


...that'd be my fear anyway.
 
camel said:
All was great until the first time I took a cross-country flight by myself. I didn't even know how to fuel up the plane. They never taught that. I wish I had _more_ hours of training.
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"Ailerona Unicom, white Cessna at transient, request the fuel truck and a line guy." :)
 
Hank S said:
So what makes engineers slow? I was my CFI's first student, pushed hard and was impatiently waiting for my checkride at 52 hours. I was badly overprepared.

--Hank, BSME, MSE; PP-ASEL, IA

P.S.--I was working full time as a Manufacturing Engineer and getting my Master of Engineering degree, while taking flight lessons on weekends. It was a good kind of busy.
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I've found many to be a little cocky in thinking a degree makes a difference in flight training, add to that many of them seem very linear in their thinking, landing and holding her off seems a little more jerky, floating or PIO with engineer types than other folks I've trained.

Could just be the guys I've worked with, think I've trained 2 or 3, but I found this to be true across the board for the guys I've trained.
 
I was at about 80 hours but about 10 of that was because the DPE had a one month delay and there was no other DPE here to do it. So 72 is pretty close to where I was. I was 40 years old so probably am not as quick as someone who is 18.
 
camel said:
All was great until the first time I took a cross-country flight by myself. I didn't even know how to fuel up the plane. They never taught that. I wish I had _more_ hours of training.
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On Saturday, I showed a visiting student in his Check Ride Prep phase how to tune in the nearby AWOS. He said his radio didn't have that frequency . . . 132.575 . . . Pull the knob and turn, it was all new to him . . .
 
mkosmo said:
It's seems that most instructor miss the fueling part. Mine did, too. Still haven't had to fuel myself, but I'm confident I can ;-)
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In a high wing, it's best to give it a try before you have to do it somewhere unattended. Most places have a ladder, but not always. To be able to fuel a high wing plane using only the plane to climb on is not a simple or easy task of you have any mobility issues. You might want to make sure there is a step ladder in the plane for those trips you're going to have to fuel yourself.
 
I really have trouble with the 72hr average, they must not be factoring in foreign students at 141 programs. That's still the major volume of the training business, and typically they go through pretty close to scheduled minimums. If 72 was the composite average, then the average middle aged or older man that picks it up as a hobby would have to be taking several hundred hours, and that isn't happening.

So is it learning the extra technology that is causing the stretch in training time? I trained at a busy PT 61 school in LGB late 80s-early 90s. Everybody was taking the PP rides at 40-45 with a few exceptions who would go over 100 trying to beat their fears. PP-40, IR-125, CP-250, in, done, out.

The only real difference in aviation between then and now is the technology. Does having a 430W in your trainer add 30hrs to the training? :dunno: I could see if someone didn't put in the effort outside the plane to learn it where it potentially could, because even between outside and inside the plane, you're gonna spend 30+ hours learning it between the two.
 
I think I passed my ride at 60ish hours 5 years ago. I thought that was a great amount of training. One thing I've noticed since I've had my license is a lot of people waste so much time on the ground with the engine running and the Hobbs spinning. It's really unreal. I've seen people take 20 minutes to get the ATIS, call ground and taxi, then another 5 or so at the hold short line. It's just so much time wasting!

That certainly does not account for the national average increasing. My guess is the amount of content remains about the same but the idea now is that the practical test requires a substantial amount of knowledge to pass and many flight schools use a curriculum guide that has a set pace. So even the best students still need to take a certain amount of time before their "stage one check." So very few people even have a chance to move faster than the flight school will allow.
 
jspilot said:
I think I passed my ride at 60ish hours 5 years ago. I thought that was a great amount of training. One thing I've noticed since I've had my license is a lot of people waste so much time on the ground with the engine running and the Hobbs spinning. It's really unreal. I've seen people take 20 minutes to get the ATIS, call ground and taxi, then another 5 or so at the hold short line. It's just so much time wasting!

<snip>
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Once a year we go to an airport with are sailplanes and camp near the end of the runway for a long weekeend. There is a university flight school operating at that airport. They do ridiculously long runups, one of these times I would like to take a large sports timer and start timing the run-ups. They often run at run-up power for 3 to 5 minutes. Of course there instructors are former students so they teach they way they were taught.

Brian
 
jspilot said:
I think I passed my ride at 60ish hours 5 years ago. I thought that was a great amount of training. One thing I've noticed since I've had my license is a lot of people waste so much time on the ground with the engine running and the Hobbs spinning. It's really unreal. I've seen people take 20 minutes to get the ATIS, call ground and taxi, then another 5 or so at the hold short line. It's just so much time wasting!

That certainly does not account for the national average increasing. My guess is the amount of content remains about the same but the idea now is that the practical test requires a substantial amount of knowledge to pass and many flight schools use a curriculum guide that has a set pace. So even the best students still need to take a certain amount of time before their "stage one check." So very few people even have a chance to move faster than the flight school will allow.
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That's another one of the things with an advanced radio that the Flightstream 210 can eliminate. Basically you're up and running before you start to program your boxes, and with a GNS interface, that can add 5-15 minutes of non flying Hobbs to a lesson, especially in IR training with a V-Airway departure. With the FS-210 you can do t all on your iPad before start up and then just do a quick upload once started and begin taxi.
 
FAR 61.109 spells the minimum hours of dual.
Once I soloed I didn’t see a reason to hurry to the practical test.
As an inexperienced pilot I didn’t have a desire to carry passengers.
The ninety day sign off didn’t seem that burdensome.
The cost of flying as a student pilot was no different than the cost of flying with a private pilot certificate.
It seems to me a better question as far as cost would be; how many hours of dual instruction before passing the check ride?
 
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