What constitutes low/med/high time to you

kayoh190 said:
Wow - what a great example of someone that has no idea what an airline pilot actually does.
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Thanks for chiming in, I hoped people would, and that they would share their views.
So please tell us what its like for you. All good discussions get many points of view from numerous sources.
I truly enjoy your posts, and do hope when you have the time, you will post your thoughts.
Thanks!
 
Shuswap BC said:
When you think about a low time pilot, moderate time ones, and high timers, what is the numbers you are thinking of?
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Low: Less than 50 hours a year.
Mid: 50-200 hours a year
High: Over 200 hours a year.

IMO total hours matters less than flying enough to maintain proficiency. For example, I was a better pilot at 120 hours, with a fresh IFR cert, than I am in the spring after not flying for five months even though I have north of 2000 now.
 
Shuswap BC said:
So enlighten me.
My brother is an airline pilot, and two good friends, my grandfather is a retired airline pilot, and my examiner was an airline pilot, talking to them extensively, and getting to ride jump seat twice, it sure seems so. They would agree with me, and when i take them flying they all seem so thrilled to actually "be out in a real plane, doing real flying" was how my brother put it a couple of months ago when we were up in my Bonanza. My brother is older than me, and 32k hours. But he struggled with basic skills and had me land because " I will probably crash if I try it".
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Well let’s break it down

Shuswap BC said:
Someone who sits in a room doing the weight and balance, checking weather, telling them how much fuel to use
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Yes we have a dispatcher to do all the planning but it’s my job as the captain to sign for the airplane and make sure the dispatcher did his job properly and gave us an alternate (if applicable, gave us enough gas, gave us a good alternate, etc. It takes 2 to go (dispatcher and CA must agree) and 1 to stay.


Shuswap BC said:
just droning along on autopilot, heck it will land itself, and never ever go to a small runway.
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You do know that for initial and recurrent training we have to shoot a single engine ILS down to minimums without an autopilot? You do know that sometimes the autopilot is MEL’d and we have to do a 2 hour flight without an AP? You do realize there are airliners without autoland? You do realize we fly into crappy strips in the Bahamas with zero runway markings? The shortest runway we use is Key West which is 4800ft. Is that not short enough for a 75-120 passenger jet?

Shuswap BC said:
those pilots don't even do a walk around style thorough preflight.
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Wrong. We have to do an interior and exterior walk around before each flight. The first item on the preflight checklist is “interior and exterior inspection - complete”


Shuswap BC said:
They don't even stand by the door, greet the passengers, check how the luggage and passengers are being loaded
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We say bye to every passenger when they deplane. If the FO has to catch a commute and can’t say bye, I’ll stand at the door. The ramp is responsible for loading bags, not me. The gate agent is responsible to load people onto my plane, not me. I don’t really care about cargo/bags unless we have dangerous goods, live animals, or anything else that warrants my attention. Same thing with passengers. Unless someone is causing an issue, I don’t really care.

Shuswap BC said:
They are out of touch with the actual plane, and activities going on with it. Auto throttles, autopilot that lands, it almost takes away the need for a pilot completely
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You do know there’s not just a fly button right? We actually have to set up the overhead panel, set up the FMS, etc. Are you saying that once we’re in cruise, we don’t have to worry about things and zone out? Again, you do realize there are planes without autothrottles and auto land?

As for the lifestyle, it’s not for everyone. To each their own. As an FO I’d get anywhere from 15-20 days off a month. As a junior line holder/decent reserve captain I can get off 12-16 days. I live in base and sit reserve at home in my boxers. I travel the world for free, and when I’m off, I’m off. I don’t have to take any work home besides the quarterly LMS that I have to do on my iPad. I’m still very active flying GA and I can still land a piston pretty well:). Of course if you’ve got an airline pilot who’s flown nothing but heavies for the past 20 years is going to suck landing a 172. You’d probably suck landing my work plane too. So what’s your point?
 
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The FAA allows helicopter pilots to multiply their time by 10 to get an equivalent fixed wing time. I’m approaching 50,000 hrs now. So I’ve got that going for me...
 
jordane93 said:
For those of you that own and have insurance, is there a diminishing return on hours? Like if you put on your app you have 3000TT, does the insurance company automatically cap their max deductions at 1500TT? Do they set a number and any more than that and you won’t get anymore reduction on your rate?
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Seems you don’t get much of a discount past 1000tt, IFR and after a year of owning the plane. Still good to shop insurance every year, some companies like to slowly creep up their rates and hope you don’t notice.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Question: Who cares???

Answer to the original question: Like so many things in aviation, "it depends." You think 3000 hours is low time, but a 172 pilot who has been flying 150 hours per year for 20 years is pretty high time. Someone who has 3000 hours and just stepped into their first jet? Not so much.

Same goes for the type of flying. I have about 2000 hours but I've managed to have quite a variety of experiences in that time. I'd consider myself "mid time" with respect to single-engine piston, but OTOH I just started flying turbines a few months ago so I'm a green rookie when it comes to stinky whiny airplanes.

So, what's the point anyway?
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The discussion was actually started by a fellow pilot at the airpark where I live. There were 17 of us all pilots, discussing what we thought constituted low/med/high hours. We were all recreational pilots, not professionals who fly for a living, although several of us fly some on business trips, like myself. It was interesting to hear 17 different pilots share their stories and opinions. The one who started the discussion has 640 hours he told us, and he added that when he had 300 hours he felt in his mind somewhat experienced as a pilot, now at 640 he feels like a rookie with a lot to learn. Then he was asking us about our hours, and what we felt is low, med, high time. Sometimes us pilots just discuss things.
Don't get them started on tires, STOL kits, or landing with a tail wind to avoid approaching over the hillside covered in trees.
 
Velocity173 said:
Oh jeez, now you went and done it. Doc will be here in 3,2,1..,
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Hopefully.
While I certainly don't agree with him on some topics, i started this knowing that it would be met by some as incorrect as I view it. My thoughts are just my own. Never did i say anything under 15000 hours is not high time. I want to hear from you all, agreeing, disagreeing, or partially in agreement. A one sided discussion is not much of a discussion after all.
Adults should be able to disagree with each other, and open up a dialogue.
 
Shuswap BC said:
So many good points from all of you, thus is the kind of feedback that I was looking for, this post and the many others be it about NVG and more.

Yes, airliner time is not a good example of time being a good teacher. Someone who sits in a room doing the weight and balance, checking weather, telling them how much fuel to use, just droning along on autopilot, heck it will land itself, and never ever go to a small runway. I don't really consider airliners building time, those pilots don't even do a walk around style thorough preflight. They just expect others to have checked it over and fuel itnfor them. They don't even stand by the door, greet the passengers, check how the luggage and passengers are being loaded. They are out of touch with the actual plane, and activities going on with it. Auto throttles, autopilot that lands, it almost takes away the need for a pilot completely. I bet they would feel better if they were hands on, request the shorter runway, hand fly at 1000' agl. While I could never be an airline pilot myself, the boredom would be too much for me...I do actually admire the men and women who can tolerate the boredom, the airlines stupid rules, being away from home for extended periods instead of home in their own comfy bed with their loved ones.
I make a monthly trip where I leave on a Tuesday, spend Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights in hotels, and arriving home late evening Friday...I miss my home, girlfriend, dog, and my stuff in just that one short trip per month.
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I'll bite.
We do have dispatch and ground crew yes. We still check weather, we still do WxB, we still calculate fuel, we still review the flight plan. You know why? Cause that person who does it for us just sends us whatever the software spits out. We do walk around preflights and post flights. I've caught static wicks, VG's, tire cord, unmarked dents etc. We are keeping track of pax and luggage I just spent 15 min working out how to get WxB to work so I could get 2 more pax on cause of a landing weight issue. I know any wheelchair pax, any LEOS, i'm talking with Ops about luggage from connecting flights. I preemptively went to another gate whos flight was delayed to the same destination and got another 6 people onboard who wouldn't have left for another few hrs waiting on an inbound. Theres so much more to the Ops side of 121 world than just punch in the PDC and wait around "not greeting pax"

On the handflying business a lot of our jets are less technically advanced than a 182 with a garmin 430. On the 145 we don't get vnav so your calculating all the points on on sids stars and how to get slowed down. (we can't slow down and get down) We fly into podunk airports, we get terrible vectors, so many things require kicking off the autopilot and putting in on the runway old school looking out the window. One of the sayings from LCA's and training department is 1-800 be a pilot.
I just handflew from mobile to houston at 26000ft. In cruise flight not +- 200ft or 100ft. Probably +-20 ft at 26000 where the plane goes out of trim when someone walks to the Lav and a 1 degree pitch change = a few 100 FPM vertical speed.
All, every single one of the pilots i've ever flown with can put a plane into the pattern and put it on speed in the TDZ on centerline no Autopilot no vertical info just judgement. Cause we do it every day at outstations.

We do never take the short runway though if a longer ones available mainly for passenger comfort though. Why slam them into the seatback ahead when I can roll it on pop the buckets let it coast and take a highspeed?
 
Shuswap BC said:
Hopefully.
While I certainly don't agree with him on some topics, i started this knowing that it would be met by some as incorrect as I view it. My thoughts are just my own. Never did i say anything under 15000 hours is not high time. I want to hear from you all, agreeing, disagreeing, or partially in agreement. A one sided discussion is not much of a discussion after all.
Adults should be able to disagree with each other, and open up a dialogue.
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Well nothing wrong with opposing points of view but I think you’re painting too broad a brush on the airline issue. I’m sure there are boring times in the airlines as I’m sure there are some challenging times as well. Not adrenaline pumping excitement but as stated earlier, it still beats sitting in a cubicle. Also, how many truly exciting types of flying jobs are there and do they even come close to major airline pay? I was just watching a YT vid where the pilot (Mover) was asked by a viewer, why doesn’t he film his airline gig. Well, other than it being against his company policy, he simply said it was just boring flying. Sure if you’re a former F-16 and F-18 pilot I’m sure it is. But I’d also bet he prefers the pay difference over pulling Gs as well. There are pros and cons to every endeavor. If it meets his QOL requirements, good for him.

As far as the low, mid, high time question. You’d really have to break it down into many segments and even then, one (private 91) wouldn’t translate to another (135/121). Each community would have different definitions based on typical community hours. And as always, time doesn’t necessarily equal experience. In some cases, quality over quantity does exist.
 
dbahn said:
I think you really also have to factor in what type of flying makes up your experience. The more variation of aircraft and conditions the more experience per hour. The 30,000 hour airline captain flying between familiar towered fields doesn't really have 10 times the experience level of the 3000 hour pilot whose time is obtained in a wide variety of aircraft, airfields, and flight conditions for each aircraft's capability.

Or as the saying goes if you fly the same hour over and over again it hardly counts much in the experience column. I also think a lot of valuable ""experience is gained by conscientious instructing as well.
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I admit that the "flying the same hour" bit got to me. Heck, I stopped logging time altogether at one point (though our airplane logs reflected that I flew it.) I had enough for commercial and instrument [which I never finished, that's my retirement plan!], so I didn't really care. Now I want to dig up the old plane logs ...
 
Yeah, trying to nail down what’s high vs. low time just isn’t easy to do.

I’m the lowest time pee-on of a pilot, then there’s one guy that I know personally, who is retired military and instructed in F16’s, flown packages ‘round the world on an MD-11 for over a decade as a FO and now upgraded to CA a few years ago and recently became a DPE. When you receive dual instruction from him, I believe it is the best instruction anyone can get. He has a very wide array of experience in many different airplane types and is certainly one of the most knowledgeable pilots I’ve ever come across and I’m happy to say he owns the FBO at my home airfield.

To me, he is the definition of ‘high time’.
 
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flyingcheesehead said:
Question: Who cares???

Answer to the original question: Like so many things in aviation, "it depends." You think 3000 hours is low time, but a 172 pilot who has been flying 150 hours per year for 20 years is pretty high time. Someone who has 3000 hours and just stepped into their first jet? Not so much.

Same goes for the type of flying. I have about 2000 hours but I've managed to have quite a variety of experiences in that time. I'd consider myself "mid time" with respect to single-engine piston, but OTOH I just started flying turbines a few months ago so I'm a green rookie when it comes to stinky whiny airplanes.

So, what's the point anyway?
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This is how I feel about it. These kinds of threads pop up from time to time, and it always becomes a platform for certain members to stroke their own egos by denigrating the flying that others do. IMO the coolest thing about aviation is that there are a million different ways to fly, with a huge variety of different skillsets required. There's always new stuff to learn. So when talking about low time or high time, it's necessary to consider the context.
 
Shuswap BC said:
They would agree with me, and when i take them flying they all seem so thrilled to actually "be out in a real plane, doing real flying" was how my brother put it a couple of months ago when we were up in my Bonanza. My brother is older than me, and 32k hours. But he struggled with basic skills and had me land because " I will probably crash if I try it".
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Airline pilots commonly talk about 'real flying' when discussing GA, but that doesn't mean we don't respect what we do. It's just a different kind of flying. We typically fly our work airplanes a lot, so it's more novel when we're buzzing around VFR in something like a Bonanza. You give your brother a couple of reps in your Bonanza and he'd be fine.

I got my SES a little over a year ago and my instructor laughed because for the first hour or so I had to get used to how much right rudder was needed (especially in the 185!). But I eventually got back to a place where it was second nature. That doesn't make me a crappy pilot, it's just a skill that hasn't been used in awhile. My instructor could fly the hell out of a seaplane, but I'd bet he'd struggle mightily with energy management in my airliner. Get him some experience doing that, and he'd be fine after awhile. It's just different skills for different types of flying. It doesn't make one better than the other.
 
falconkidding said:
I'll bite.
We do have dispatch and ground crew yes. We still check weather, we still do WxB, we still calculate fuel, we still review the flight plan. You know why? Cause that person who does it for us just sends us whatever the software spits out. We do walk around preflights and post flights. I've caught static wicks, VG's, tire cord, unmarked dents etc. We are keeping track of pax and luggage I just spent 15 min working out how to get WxB to work so I could get 2 more pax on cause of a landing weight issue. I know any wheelchair pax, any LEOS, i'm talking with Ops about luggage from connecting flights. I preemptively went to another gate whos flight was delayed to the same destination and got another 6 people onboard who wouldn't have left for another few hrs waiting on an inbound. Theres so much more to the Ops side of 121 world than just punch in the PDC and wait around "not greeting pax"

On the handflying business a lot of our jets are less technically advanced than a 182 with a garmin 430. On the 145 we don't get vnav so your calculating all the points on on sids stars and how to get slowed down. (we can't slow down and get down) We fly into podunk airports, we get terrible vectors, so many things require kicking off the autopilot and putting in on the runway old school looking out the window. One of the sayings from LCA's and training department is 1-800 be a pilot.
I just handflew from mobile to houston at 26000ft. In cruise flight not +- 200ft or 100ft. Probably +-20 ft at 26000 where the plane goes out of trim when someone walks to the Lav and a 1 degree pitch change = a few 100 FPM vertical speed.
All, every single one of the pilots i've ever flown with can put a plane into the pattern and put it on speed in the TDZ on centerline no Autopilot no vertical info just judgement. Cause we do it every day at outstations.

We do never take the short runway though if a longer ones available mainly for passenger comfort though. Why slam them into the seatback ahead when I can roll it on pop the buckets let it coast and take a highspeed?
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That right there is pure awesomeness!
Thanks very much for sharing.

May I ask in your opinion what is low/med/high hours?
 
Ryanb said:
Yeah, trying to nail down what’s high vs. low time just isn’t easy to do.

I’m the lowest time pee-on of a pilot, then there’s one guy that I know personally, who is retired military and instructed in F16’s, flown packages ‘round the world on an MD-11 for over a decade as a FO and now upgraded to CA a few years ago and recently became a DPE. When you receive dual instruction from him, I believe it is the best instruction anyone can get. He has a very wide array of experience in many different airplane types and is certainly one of the most knowledgeable pilots I’ve ever come across and I’m happy to say he owns the FBO at my home airfield.

To me, he is the definition of ‘high time’.
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People like that amaze me, and I always find it a pleasure to meet them, and possibly hear a story or two.
At fly ins I often get to meet an older person who has such a vast range of skills and experiences...I feel humbled getting to know them. I would have loved a job for a few years flying an old DC-3 way up north, putting it on skis for the winter and flying into small frozen lakes, that sort of thing...and I hate cold, but still think a couple years of it would have been a great experience.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Well... yeah. They would be low time pilots. What’s wrong with being a low time pilot? It’s not an insult.
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It isn't at all...this is a wide open discussion about what you personally would call low time, or other.
So may I ask this then of you, if that pilot had built up 5000 hours between age 20 and 35, then stopped flying very often, and only flew about 25 hours per year for the last 20 years, what would you say they are, low/med/high time?
 
Wasn’t there something about someone being a expert in their craft once they had 10,000hrs (not just aviation)
 
Your a Master Army Aviator with 2500 hrs in the Army...would also suggest some hours are really multiples of others depending on flight mission profile and systems in use...
 
People have different aptitudes when it comes to flying airplanes and people do different things when they are flying their airplane. I don't think competency in an airplane is a function of hours and I think low time/mid time/high time has no real meaning.
 
Shuswap BC said:
It isn't at all...this is a wide open discussion about what you personally would call low time, or other.
So may I ask this then of you, if that pilot had built up 5000 hours between age 20 and 35, then stopped flying very often, and only flew about 25 hours per year for the last 20 years, what would you say they are, low/med/high time?
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Ummm. Not current
 
Found it

“Mark Twain defined an expert as "an ordinary fellow from another town".

Will Rogers described an expert as "A man fifty miles from home with a briefcase."

Danish scientist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr defined an expert as "A person that has made every possible mistake within his or her field."

Malcolm Gladwell describes expertise as a matter of practicing the correct way for a total of around 10,000 hours.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert


Funny with the mistake part, VERY true, but sadly with how the handringers are taking over we don’t tolerate mistakes, thus we have invited far worse
 
Shuswap BC said:
When you think about a low time pilot, moderate time ones, and high timers, what is the numbers you are thinking of?
I'm certain we all have our own thoughts on this.
For me less than 5,000 hours is low time, 5,000 - 15,000 is a moderate time pilot, over 15,000 I would consider high time. We never stop learning, but those first 5,000 were when I learned some critical things the hard way. Around 3,000 hours I began to believe my own BS that I had a clue what I was doing, and got a bit dangerous.
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Everything is relative. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/03/14/air-force-sets-goal-20-flight-hours-month-pilots.html. The hours of retiring USAF pilots is not that high unless they worked in pilot training. Most are under 4000 hours.

The average private pilot flys 2 hours a month. Very few fly 100 hours a year.
 
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James331 said:
Found it

“Mark Twain defined an expert as "an ordinary fellow from another town".

Will Rogers described an expert as "A man fifty miles from home with a briefcase."

Danish scientist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr defined an expert as "A person that has made every possible mistake within his or her field."

Malcolm Gladwell describes expertise as a matter of practicing the correct way for a total of around 10,000 hours.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert


Funny with the mistake part, VERY true, but sadly with how the handringers are taking over we don’t tolerate mistakes, thus we have invited far worse
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An old crotchety woman at my 1st real job out of school had her own opinion of experts:

“An ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip”
 
Shuswap BC said:
When you think about a low time pilot, moderate time ones, and high timers, what is the numbers you are thinking of?
I'm certain we all have our own thoughts on this.
For me less than 5,000 hours is low time, 5,000 - 15,000 is a moderate time pilot, over 15,000 I would consider high time. We never stop learning, but those first 5,000 were when I learned some critical things the hard way. Around 3,000 hours I began to believe my own BS that I had a clue what I was doing, and got a bit dangerous.
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I would love to know the answer to this, not from the PoA readers, but from actuarial analysts. For driving, what matters most are age, gender, marital status, driving record, drinking behavior etc.. I suspect that accident risk of pilots plateaus around 500 hours. I can even see that it may get worse after some threshold. As a CFI I try not to judge a pilot by the hours they claim to have, especially on a flight review. No doubt there is a correlation between skill level and flight hours, but it is a weak one. Experience does not always equate to skill. It is actually possible for the skill to erode despite increasing hours in the seat.
 
How many hours a pilot has make little difference compared to POA message counters (and this post is a +1!!!)
 
I asked at a local banner tow company if they have a maximum age limit. Their answer was no, we have a minimum skill limit. I think you could substitute minimum hours for maximum age in that sentence.
 
I know a guy with a 100 hours. He has 100 hours ten times. He'd tell you he has a 1,000 hours. He might not mention the three (3) gear-ups.
 
172andyou said:
Low: Less than 50 hours a year.
Mid: 50-200 hours a year
High: Over 200 hours a year.

IMO total hours matters less than flying enough to maintain proficiency. For example, I was a better pilot at 120 hours, with a fresh IFR cert, than I am in the spring after not flying for five months even though I have north of 2000 now.
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Lolz

So dude who burns a line in the sky in the airliner is super elite status

Guy who’s doing medevac is a rookie

Riiiight
 
EdFred said:
Should be broken down further to hand flying time vs pushing button on/off at 500 feet. The latter is just a fancy data entry job.
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I disagree. It’s not about amount of time holding an airplane straight & level, but rather the variety of circumstances experienced and the decisions made to handle them.
 
James331 said:
I’d say
Low 0-1500
Mid 1500-5000
High 5000+

As time goes on more experience makes for a more well rounded and better pilot, especially for pilots who keep pushing into other facets of flying and try to expand their knowledge, who are confident enough to be able to put the student pilot hat back on and say get into gliders or helicopters etc, or other areas where they don’t have experience.
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Yep. That's how I see it.

172andyou said:
Low: Less than 50 hours a year.
Mid: 50-200 hours a year
High: Over 200 hours a year.

IMO total hours matters less than flying enough to maintain proficiency. For example, I was a better pilot at 120 hours, with a fresh IFR cert, than I am in the spring after not flying for five months even though I have north of 2000 now.
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The first year I began flying, I flew 400 hours, the second year 800, and the third year, over 1,000. Maybe I was a "high time" pilot back then and all the thousands in various type aircraft have been just more of the same?
 
Zeldman said:
Back when I was the one receiving resumes, I got one, and I don't remember verbatim, but it was something like, ''I am a 500 hour pilot but I fly like a 1000 hour pilot...''
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When I had 1,000 hours, I flew like a 500-hour pilot. There was only a year difference and I had gotten soft from instructing!
 
I responded earlier, but if I really *had* to put numbers to it....

Low - 0-2000
Mid - 2000-20000
High - > 20000
 
I flew with Amelia Reid back when she was teaching aerobatics. She had 55,000 hours and was at the time the highest time female aviator anyone knew of...
Most of her experience was instructing and air show performances, so she was no "button pusher" for sure.
 
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