Flying Without a License

OkieFlyer

OkieFlyer

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Andrew L.
Just curious what the group thinks.

An acquaintance of mine started his PPL training about a year ago. Shortly after soloing, knew he was hooked on flying, and just went ahead and bought a C-150 to complete his training. I'd say he bought it sometime during the late spring-early summer of 2018. Well, it's been 8-9-10 months since purchasing the plane, and he's out flying quite regularly. Thing is, he doesn't have his PPL yet. I asked him a couple days ago, half jokingly, if he has his certificate yet, expecting him to chuckle and say yes. He said no. I asked him what the heck he's doing out flying solo all over the place without a cert. He said he's signed off for several airports and he just goes to those airports over and over for now, and that he was thinking about going ahead and getting the certificate sometime in the near future, which is the same thing he said 6 months ago. Basically, he's just cruising around solo semi-locally, for some indefinite period of time, until he decides to pop for the certificate.

I get that it's required for his CFI to sign him off to fly to certain places solo for the purpose of training and getting the required hours as we all did, but it seems a bit disingenuous to decide to take a hiatus from training and just go fly for close to a year without having achieved an airman's certificate.

This may be a normal thing and no biggie to some, I'm not even sure how much I even care, but it struck me as odd, and thus, I wondered what the good folks of PoA think.
 
Procrastinating or is there some other reason not to get the certificate?


Tom
 
OkieFlyer said:
This may be a normal thing and no biggie to some, I'm not even sure how much I even care, but it struck me as odd, and thus, I wondered what the good folks of PoA think.
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I can't speak for anyone else, but this good folk at POA thinks it's between him, his instructor and anyone he wants to tell, and otherwise none of my business.
 
There was a guy like this flying from our field. He would fly short flights 2 or 3 times a week up and down the coast a bit at sunset. Did it for years. All of a sudden he stopped. I asked around and found out the faa busted him for flying in the mode c veil with his transponder off. They called the airport manager and asked if they knew who was flying from our field a few times a week about sunset.

Apparently he didn’t know he needed to set the transponder to alt when in the veil.

This is why you have to take training. Duh. I’m not sure exactly what action they took against him, but he hasn’t been around for months.
 
There is a guy at my airport that does exactly that. He flies fairly often. For years. He says that during his early training years ago he failed the written a couple of times. Decided he would just fly solo locally and be happy. Owns his own plane. If he wants to go somewhere he brings along a pilot. Offered to help him study as I was studying to take my written but he never took me up on it.
 
I looked at an Archer that was for sale several years ago. The seller was a student pilot, 45-50, owned the plane for 4-5 years. I guess he was "Flying under the Radar". I would find it hard to believe that he wasn't taking friends and family up.
 
There's a family in this area, dad and three sons, who have a grass strip on their farm. All four have homebuilts and they fly off of their farm. The one I'm most familiar with is a Wagabond.

None have licenses. Dad taught the boys how to fly (none of these guys are young, the youngest boy is probably 40ish).

None of the planes have radios or xpdrs. Heck, none of the planes even have tail numbers.

I don't have a problem with it and, actually, I have a bit of admiration for rebels like them. (As long as they only fly solo or with each other, which I'm told they do)
 
A CFI at our local airport pointed out a nice Mooney and said it is owned by a multi year student pilot that is only interested in flying solo and has never gotten his certificate. He still engages the CFI just often enough to be approved for solo flight. The guy is a widower and has no desire to take anyone else up.
 
Folks that fly with out a PPL or a current PPL are setting them selves up and their families up for disaster if they have a mishap when flying. Even with insurance lawsuits will be filed for damage to property, injury or in the worst case scenario a fatality. The same can be said about flying a plane out of annual.

I suspect there are folks locally here that do some or all the above. Do I care yes and no. Will I report them to the feds? Not unless I see unsafe/reckless actions.
 
For those guys that are doing this legally, they still need to get a new solo endorsement every 90 days. Which means some review training at least every 90 days. Which, in a strange way, means that the long-time solo student may actually be more proficient (within his limited sphere of tasks) than the certified pilot who passed his checkride 40 years ago and has only flown with an instructor once every 2 years.

However, as a CFI, I don't see myself repeatedly endorsing someone for solo flight if they're obviously not intending to make progress toward the checkride. I think I gave a third solo endorsement to one pilot once, and that was only because the plane had been down for maintenance for a while and the existing endorsement expired just a bit before the checkride.
 
timwinters said:
There's a family in this area, dad and three sons, who have a grass strip on their farm. All four have homebuilts and they fly off of their farm. The one I'm most familiar with is a Wagabond.

None have licenses. Dad taught the boys how to fly (none of these guys are young, the youngest boy is probably 40ish).

None of the planes have radios or xpdrs. Heck, none of the planes even have tail numbers.

I don't have a problem with it and, actually, I have a bit of admiration for rebels like them. (As long as they only fly solo or with each other, which I'm told they do)
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As long as they fly solo or with each other, and out of B, C, or D airspace, and not over my land ...
 
As far as I’m concerned, as long as he remains current on his 90 day solo sign off, he’s perfectly legal to do what he’s doing.

Might just be hesitant to take the checkride, who knows!
 
I don't see an issue so long as he's actually flying solo only. Perfectly legal. Maybe he just wants to fly because he loves flying, but doesn't want to take the checkride. Who likes checkrides? Nobody I know of. To my knowledge this is actually not an uncommon thing in the glider world since most of them are single seat anyway.

Most of us like having friends along while flying, but as an introvert I also enjoy some solo flying time. Some people may prefer specifically being only able to fly by themselves as a time to get away from it all.
 
My son wil be that way for a while. He's just waiting for his 16 birthday to solo and will be flying solo for a year until he can take his checkride.
 
I flew on solo endorsements for a while when I was in high school, just biding my time until I started college. I didn't care for the lone instructor in our one horse town and didn't care to keep flying with him, but he also didn't mind just giving me an extra endorsement so long as I kept renting the airplane from him.
 
No matter what activity we're talking about, if it requires some certification to perform that activity, there are always those who will do it outside of the law for a whole host of reasons. There are a lot of drivers on the road without a valid driver's license. I'm sure the same is true in the air.

Where it can get real dicey for those persons is if they have an accident. It would seem the financial and other costs to them, if they survived, could be worse if they were operating illegally.

A few years ago, we had a car accident here locally where a young man cut across a couple of lanes of traffic to try to make an exit, and he killed two or three people in the process. He had no driver's license. He is spending a few years in jail.

And wouldn't any aviation insurance policy become null and void if a pilot was flying illegally? I would think having the proper certifications and remaining current would be necessary for the insurance policy to remain in effect?

Of course, I'm not talking about the ones who are flying legally solo. I'm talking about those who don't have the sign-off to fly solo, but do it anyway.
 
eman1200 said:
do any of us reeeeeally have a license?

c'mon, someone had to say it!
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Beastie%20Boys%20-%20Licensed%20To%20Ill%20insert.jpg
 
RussR said:
For those guys that are doing this legally, they still need to get a new solo endorsement every 90 days. Which means some review training at least every 90 days. Which, in a strange way, means that the long-time solo student may actually be more proficient (within his limited sphere of tasks) than the certified pilot who passed his checkride 40 years ago and has only flown with an instructor once every 2 years.

However, as a CFI, I don't see myself repeatedly endorsing someone for solo flight if they're obviously not intending to make progress toward the checkride. I think I gave a third solo endorsement to one pilot once, and that was only because the plane had been down for maintenance for a while and the existing endorsement expired just a bit before the checkride.
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You're assuming they don't just have some kind of deal with the CFI where he just signs the logbook.
 
OkieFlyer said:
Just curious what the group thinks.

An acquaintance of mine started his PPL training about a year ago. Shortly after soloing, knew he was hooked on flying, and just went ahead and bought a C-150 to complete his training. I'd say he bought it sometime during the late spring-early summer of 2018. Well, it's been 8-9-10 months since purchasing the plane, and he's out flying quite regularly. Thing is, he doesn't have his PPL yet. I asked him a couple days ago, half jokingly, if he has his certificate yet, expecting him to chuckle and say yes. He said no. I asked him what the heck he's doing out flying solo all over the place without a cert. He said he's signed off for several airports and he just goes to those airports over and over for now, and that he was thinking about going ahead and getting the certificate sometime in the near future, which is the same thing he said 6 months ago. Basically, he's just cruising around solo semi-locally, for some indefinite period of time, until he decides to pop for the certificate.

I get that it's required for his CFI to sign him off to fly to certain places solo for the purpose of training and getting the required hours as we all did, but it seems a bit disingenuous to decide to take a hiatus from training and just go fly for close to a year without having achieved an airman's certificate.

This may be a normal thing and no biggie to some, I'm not even sure how much I even care, but it struck me as odd, and thus, I wondered what the good folks of PoA think.
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It is certainly odd. I've heard of folks flying without a medical because they can't pass the medical exam, or those who fly IFR without a IFR rating, but I have never heard of someone who passed a medical and be good enough to get a solo endorsement but not take the checkride.
 
I knew of a guy which has since passed, not in a plane, that never had a license and flew all over the country for about 15 years. No medical no student license no bfr, nothing. Although he did do annuals on his plane yearly I was told.
 
1RTK1 said:
I knew of a guy which has since passed, not in a plane, that never had a license and flew all over the country for about 15 years. No medical no student license no bfr, nothing. Although he did do annuals on his plane yearly I was told.
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Some years back when Cloud Nine still had the 310 but I was starting to think about upgrades, I inquired about a 414 that was for sale.

Come to find the guy had owned it for 30 years, done no annuals in that time frame, just whatever maintenance he felt it needed "But he's very meticulous!" and had been flying it anyway.

I ended up saying I would take it if it was free, but that would be overpaying.
 
People think its the FAA that requires pilots to be certified and technically that is correct. But in reality, insurance companies and simple fear of being sued into destitution are the reason pilots get certified. For those who can afford to own their plane outright and aren't afraid to go without insurance nor afraid of being sued, there is very little motivation to play by the FAA rules.

This is part of the thread where someone will chime in a claim that anyone who flys without being certified risks hefty fines and going to federal prison. Again, technically that is correct. But in reality, prison almost never happens for simply flying yourself and your friends without being certified and fines, if they happen at all, are historically not nearly enough for the individuals in question to concern themselves with.
 
Fallsrider said:
And wouldn't any aviation insurance policy become null and void if a pilot was flying illegally? I would think having the proper certifications and remaining current would be necessary for the insurance policy to remain in effect?
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Simply put, the insurance policy would never be written nor cover a pilot who was to appropriately certified.
 
My 2nd CFI indicated he would do this for two of his students. I think it was for about a year. I don't think he does it anymore.

I asked about it once. In both cases, the students were reluctant to take the written. He said they were both fantastic at flying the plane but I think they feared the studying and the big test. I guess they had their frosting before the cake!
 
When you sign someone off for a solo, they're basically flying around on your ticket. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not qualify to advise on liability, but I'd argue an instructor signing off a student to solo bears more responsibility than signing off for a check ride (since once the candidate passes the test the examiner now shares burden) or giving a flight review or IPC (which in both cases the airman is certificated and has more personal responsibility). Quite frankly, I wouldn't want to explain in an investigation why I signed him off for solo 20 times in the last 5 years.

As far as folks flying illegally without an ticket, I'm not cool with that, particularly if they're taxiing around on my airport or sharing airspace with me. Call me a narc, but if we don't police ourselves, Congress will eventually ensure that the FAA steps up their effort.
 
OkieFlyer said:
Just curious what the group thinks.

An acquaintance of mine started his PPL training about a year ago. Shortly after soloing, knew he was hooked on flying, and just went ahead and bought a C-150 to complete his training. I'd say he bought it sometime during the late spring-early summer of 2018. Well, it's been 8-9-10 months since purchasing the plane, and he's out flying quite regularly. Thing is, he doesn't have his PPL yet. I asked him a couple days ago, half jokingly, if he has his certificate yet, expecting him to chuckle and say yes. He said no. I asked him what the heck he's doing out flying solo all over the place without a cert. He said he's signed off for several airports and he just goes to those airports over and over for now, and that he was thinking about going ahead and getting the certificate sometime in the near future, which is the same thing he said 6 months ago. Basically, he's just cruising around solo semi-locally, for some indefinite period of time, until he decides to pop for the certificate.

I get that it's required for his CFI to sign him off to fly to certain places solo for the purpose of training and getting the required hours as we all did, but it seems a bit disingenuous to decide to take a hiatus from training and just go fly for close to a year without having achieved an airman's certificate.

This may be a normal thing and no biggie to some, I'm not even sure how much I even care, but it struck me as odd, and thus, I wondered what the good folks of PoA think.
Click to expand...
The 18 year old guy next to me in a PPL written prep course said everyone in his family (granddad, father, brothers, and cousins) has been flying for years. He was the first to get a Pilot’s License.
 
I don't think it's a big deal - aviation has a tendency to weed out the incompetent and careless the old fashioned way...
 
Technically if they’re soloing they do have one- your 3rd class medical with CFI signature is a student pilot license(or certificate... whatever)

I wouldn’t be happy going very long under those limitations but for some I guess it’s enough.
 
cowman said:
Technically if they’re soloing they do have one- your 3rd class medical with CFI signature is a student pilot license(or certificate... whatever)
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Not anymore. A few years ago they changed it to students having to get a "real" license separate from the medical. This actually led to a funny incident in my PPL last year and my wife called me "sky pirate" for a bit.
 
cowman said:
Technically if they’re soloing they do have one- your 3rd class medical with CFI signature is a student pilot license(or certificate... whatever)

I wouldn’t be happy going very long under those limitations but for some I guess it’s enough.
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Yeah, I’m sure they would go get new medical even though they aren’t bothering to finish training. /sarcasm
 
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