When is a pilot no longer considered "low-time"?

[S-Works]

I am curious as to when people no longer consider a pilot to be "low-time"?

[Tinstaafl]

Bit of a moving goal post. It can apply to total time, some sub-category eg turbine/night/multi/instructing/agricultural or even compared the norms for a particular level of licence eg PPL, CPL or ATPL. It can even be the norms for a particular occupation.

[Timothy]

Depends on the context, the type of aircraft and its complexity, the mission profile, amount of training etc etc.

200 hours should make a reasonable C152 driver, a command of a 747 with less than 4,000 would seem little enough, but fast jet pilots who are training whenever they are not flying seem to reach a satisfactory level at 1,000 hours.

W

[S-Works]

Actuallly the question was about your average club PPL flyer.

[Lowtimer]

I think I only had about 50 power / 40 gliding when I became a Ppruner, and my screen name seemed appropriate them. At that stage I knew another PPL who had 150 hours and that seemed quite a lot. But now I've done about 150 hours power, it still feels pretty low time to me!

Perhaps the minutes are sometimes more significant than the hours, especially those spent in very intense activities, e.g. gliding, aerobatics, formation, doing your IMC training.

Number of landings is a measure where a lot of SEP folk have probably caught up with long haul transport types, but of course the long haulers have other skills which I'll probably never have. Looking forward I think I'll have done well if I can reach 2,000 hours by the time I can't afford to fly any more, or fail my medical.

I know a couple of people who have more than 10,000 hours on single engine piston and gliders. To me that's high time by any standards!

[BEagle]

I use a normal rule of thumb for PPL holders of 100 hr P1C before I'll let them become self-authorising on our ac.

But non-one ever stops learning.

[UL730]

I know folk who have flown a thousand hours and some that have flown an hour - a thousand times. The breadth and depth of experience to deal with the unexpected, manage, resolve, plan, adapt and cope is vastly different between the two groups.

When the mechanics of flying become autonomic and the management, negotiation and strategy of a flight is generally working out in varying conditions and destinations - you are probably on the lower rungs of an endless ladder of learning.

:rolleyes:

[S-Works]

The sage advice and the perpetual learning comments are all fine and agreed with. But..... I want to understand peoples perceptions of when someone is no longer low hours.

What makes our minds up that that a person has gone from a low hours novice to whatever stage follows before they are classsed as an experianced pilot.

Do we look at somone for example who has flown 500 hours in less than 2 years with a variety of types, ratings etc as being low houred or something else?

I liked Beagles 100hr P1 interpretation.

Before anyone asks there is not real relevance for this question just trying to understand how we view our own experiance as a pilot community.

[FlyingForFun]

Personally, I think that currency is far more important than total time.

When I returned from two months of hour-building in January 2002, I felt confident that I could handle a PA18, which was what I'd spent most of the two months flying, about as well as I'd ever be able to, despite only having 200hrs total time. But after just a couple of months of only flying at the weekend, my skills were back to average PPL level.

Right now, I've flown nearly every day for the last week and a half whilst doing my CPL course, and once again I find myself able to handle gusty cross-winds that I wouldn't have even considered flying in two weeks ago. I have no doubt that, once I've finished the course and go back to weekend flying once again, my skill level will return to its more normal level.

As UL730 says, it also depends on the type of flying you do. Having flown from Biggin Hill to Le Touquet 20 times in the last 6 months will probably make you a pretty good pilot when it comes to filling in and filing flight plans, and landing on big tarmac runways, but won't help you fly into a small grass strip, and vice versa - and that's true whether you have 100hrs or 10,000hrs total time.

At least, that's the way it seems to work for me - I don't know if everyone else is the same.

FFF
----------------

[S-Works]

Currency seems to be a good answer.

So would we describe our hypothetical example pilot who may only have been flying for a couple of years but has managed 250hrs a year on multiple types as experianced?

After all he must certainly be current and keep bringing the aircraft back undamaged must demonstrate a level of competancy?

[Boing_737]

I remember reading some statistic somewhere that new PPLs are less likely to have an accident than a 100hr P1. The rationale being that the new PPL has just come off an intensive amount of flying, and, as a newly qualified pilot, is more likely to approach the big open sky with fear and trepidation (thats me that is) thus being more cautious and fastidious about things like pre-takeoff checks etc. There could be an element of complacency that creeps in as you approach the magic 100 hour figure.

Obviously, the more hours you have, the better equipped (in theory) you are to handle emergencies and stuff.

I guess I'm about to be shot down in flames, but don't worry, I'm used to it.......:O

[andrewc]

When you ask them for advice...and take it?

-- Andrew

[Deano777]

Who gives a rats ass as to whether people think you are low time or not, end of the day if your a safe competent pilot and one who doesnt think he "knows it all" and tries to learns something from every flight, to me thats all that counts, like has already been said currency is what counts, whether you have 100 hrs or 5,000 hrs you will still fit in the same size body bag if it all went tits up :cool:

safe flying, enjoy it, and take something from every flight :ok:

Dean.

[Whiskey Kilo Wanderer]

An old saw which has been doing the rounds for some time:


After 100 hours you think you know it all.

After 500 hours you know you know it all,

After 5,000 hours you know you'll never know it all!



I guess you are as low-hours as you feel, on the day.


Safe Flying.

[IO540]

Bose-x

The answer is that you are only ever as good as your recent currency ON TYPE. So a 3000hr pilot who hasn't flown for a year won't be any good.

And this is 10x more true in IMC. Which is why learning IMC flight in a collection of planes with diff instrument layouts, and then flying something else again, isn't a good idea.

Of the PPLs who are still hanging in there after a few years, most do so few hours, perhaps 10/year, that I would not consider them safe pilots.

At 50hrs/year, perhaps 100hrs P1 is a start?

[Ludwig]

Bose-x my old fruit, if it makes you happy, you're not low time any more, OK?:ok:

[maggioneato]

My excuse to him indoors for flying as much as poss, is keep safe keep current, and I really do believe that, even though it started off as a joke. So for me it is currency not hours, and I've not flown this week as the weather is awful. :{

[VFR800]

As a newly qualified PPL I'm definitely the real 'low-time' article! But I think I would side with those who argue currency. I'm into diving and the same argument applies, it doesn't matter how many dives you've done, after a year out, you need a shake-down!

Laters dudes :cool:

[GroundBound]

I've just ordered a book from Amazon UK, called The Killing Zone (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/007136269X/026-5169188-7080458)

A summary says:
You can fly through the zone. Or you can die in it. Most pilots earn their private certificate with 40 to 70 flight hours. Then they leave their instructors behind and enter the killing zone. Grimly embracing the period from 50 to 350 flight hours a vital time for new pilots to build practical and decision-making skills this deadly zone lays in wait for those who err, killing more pilots than all other periods put together. You don't have to be one of them. Aviation safety specialist Paul Craig discoverer of the killing zone shows you the fatal errors that inexperienced pilots make time after time and gives you tactics to avoid them. Based on the first in-depth, scientific study of pilot behavior and general aviation flying accidents in more than 20 years, The Killing Zone:


Identifies the time frame in which you are most likely to die
Alerts you to the 12 mistakes most likely to kill you
Outlines preventive strategies for flying through the zone alive
Provides guidelines for avoiding, evading, diverting, correcting, and managing dangers
Includes a "Pilot Personality Self-Assessment Exercise" for an individualized survival strategy


Maybe its cr@p, but it seems to address the idea that the first few hundred hours are potentially dangerous, and would presumably qualify for the idea of "low hours"

I'll let you know when I've read it :)

(edited for typos)

[Evo]

Wondered when someone would mention the Killing Zone. :)

I had mixed feelings about the book. There are some good points - some new, some which, like most good points, are fairly obvious but still worth telling. However, the basic thesis is flawed because he looks at the accident rate as a function of logged hours - the "killing zone" is a peak in the accident rates for pilots with between about 50-300 hours. What he should have done is normalize the data and look at the accident rate per pilot per hours logged. Without this, you cannot tell if 100-300 hour pilots are more likely to have an accident (as the author claims), or if there are just more 50-300 hour pilots out there than <50 or >300 hour pilots - and so more accidents.

(edit) It is often claimed that most pilots do not make their first licence renewal (I have no idea if this is true, or if it applies to the USA) - this would suggest that most pilots make the 50 hours needed to enter the zone but give up before reaching the 300 needed to leave it, creating exactly the profile needed to bias the data to give the accident rate seen in the book.

[S-Works]

It was partly reading the killing zone recently that set me off on this line of questioning.

I agree the data needed "normalising" to make it relevant.

My question purely relates to the "vanilla PPL", not IMC or any other flavour out there. It is all too obvious that an IMC has to be maintained in top condition.

[dublinpilot]

I think Bose's question was not so much what is experienced or competent (not low time), and what is inexperenced (low time), but rather what is commonly percived to be high/low time.

In my experience (about 100 hrs), people with 200+ hours consider me low time, and those with 40-50 hrs consider me high time ;) So I guess it depends more about your vantage point, than who you are looking at.

Personally when qualified I thought 100hrs total would be a lot, however now that I'm there, I still consider myself low time. Mainly because of the things that I still have to do, and therefore need help with. I've yet to make an internantional P1 flight, or to fly P1 into a major international airfield. I certainly would need to do a lot of work before attempting either. Until such things are nothing new to me, I'll consider myself low time.

dp

[IO540]

Evo

I think you make a very valid point re PPL accident statistics.

It has been reported in the press over the years (the CAA understandably don't go on the record on this subject but you can glean some data from their license issue data website) that 90-95% of PPLs expire before their first renewal, and that 75% of expired PPLs have expired with 10 or fewer hours flown. I've had this confirmed by some flying school owners. I gather the figures for the USA aren't that different, putting to bed the assertion that this is due to lack of money.

Of the PPLs that remain in the game, most (but not all) fly very little per year.

All this is going to make it hard to draw conclusions purely from the # of hrs flown.

When one goes to the CAA safety seminars, etc, it is readily apparent that they are aimed at very low currency pilots - presumably for a good reason.

Re the old argument that at 200-400hrs one is most likely to get killed, it is not necessary to meet very many PPLs to realise there is a vast range of experience around. There are many PPLs with 500hrs+who have done <10hrs in the last year. One 3000hr pilot I know has nearly just lost his PPL.

Also I can't think of any mode of transport where safety-wise not only is so much in your own hands (and not in anyone else's) but also the most common accident causes are so easily avoided. This alone is going to make a mockery of anything hour-based because here a bit of care goes such a long way.

The average PPL is going to be extremely safe - because he chucks it in almost immediately and any flying he does do is likely to be very easy local stuff. Only a tiny % of PPLs ever make it into this "killing zone" and the factors which "induce" those few people to fly for long enough are much more likely to correlate with the increase in accidents than the # of hours flown.

A social scientist with a good stats grounding would have a field day here :O

[Evo]

Back to the original question, my personal view would be that you stop being "low time" somewhere around the 100 hours TT and 50 hours P1 mark, but I agree that it doesn't really mean much - you could be well on the way to a CPL/IR in Oxford or have flown 12 hours a year since getting the PPL.

If we are looking at safety, I agree that currency is probably the most important thing - but it isn't everything. You could log 50 hours during a 3 week PPL in Florida and be more current than 99% of PPLs but you're probably less safe than someone with 200 hours who has logged 5-10 in the last month. On the other hand, total time is probably not much more than a measure of how well you may be able to compensate for a lack of currency. Lots of other things come in to play as well - IMCRs (and IMCR currency :) ), experience of the British winter (or Florida TS season, or...), recent hours with a good instructor etc. - as I was told when learning to understand statistics, just because you can count it doesn't make it mean anything... but people tend to read meaning into the easiest thing to count :ok:

[In Altissimus]

I agree with Evo.

It strikes me that there's actually nothing particularly unusual about flying in this respect.

Any skill which has both physical and cerebral elements seems to have similar characteristics. The example that springs to my mind is playing a musical instrument where training time, total (practice and performing) time, and currency all have similar effects to those described in the earlier posts. For many musicians I would think it's fair to suggest that training time + total time is an indicator of how well you could possibly play, whereas currency (recent practice) indicates how well you will actually play today. I suspect the same argument could be used in many other fields, eg. golf, acting, skiing etc.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

My excuse to [her] indoors for flying as much as poss, is keep safe keep current, and I really do believe that, even though it started off as a joke. Well, I seem to be getting away with that argument! - but then her indoors goes and spends lots of money on riding horses with the justification "well, it's cheaper than flying".

[muppethead]

To put a different slant on it, compare flying with driving a car!!

When is someone an experienced driver??

This is normally measured in years of driving. We all know how easy it is to drive a car and how often we do it.

I would estimate that someone has to be driving about 5-6 years plus before they are considered experienced and thats for only driving a car.

So what about flying a plane, which is clearly a much more complex and dangerous affair?? I would suggest it is perhaps a combination of hours, currency, experience of flying different a/c into various airfields (not always the local strip) and airspace.

Happy landings, Mupp....;)

[Cutoff]

I agree with the currency thoughts. John Farley wrote a very interesting article about this very subject when he was a test pilot on the Harrier, he was deemed low time cos all his early flights in the harrier's early days were very very short, but in terms of currency and experience, he was right on top of it, his argument was that to be called low time is ok, but needs to be viewed alongside currency. I got caught out the other day flying IMC (simulated with a second pilot), I fully know what to do with respect to a Non precision NDB approach and yet when practising it after a long break I totally stuffed it up, my flying was good, but my procedure was pants...pure currency.

[Keef]

My erstwhile boss had the answer:

- Low time is anyone with fewer hours than me.

- High time is anyone with more hours than me.


Just as:

- Young is 5 years or more younger than me;
- Old is 10 years or more older than me.


That's as true now as it was 50 years ago :ok:


Keef

[The Jetlag Kid]

Hey guys, I'm new to this forum, so please bear with me as I try to get my feet wet.

I personally agree with what Whiskey Kilo wrote. It's pretty interesting how this principle works. When I had 100 hours, I realized that I really knew a lot about aviation. When I had 500 hours I was practically ready to be an ATP. When I had 1000 hours, well that was it, I knew it all - or so I thought. Here I am, some twelve thousand hours later and I can't believe how much I don't know.

Accidents seem to cluster at certain distinct points: 100 hours, 500 hours, 1000 hours, 3000 hours, 10000 hours, and 20000 (if I remember correctly). This occurs not only with total time, but also with “time in type”. There is a real tendency to get too comfortable and let your guard down. A 10000-hour pilot with 3000 hours in type needs to be careful that he doesn’t get complacent or he too, will get bit. Unfortunately, over the years, I have known many good pilots who have died in aircraft accidents. When it happens, it is a VERY sobering experience. All too often, as you look back on the events surrounding the accident it becomes very apparent that, in many cases, it was very avoidable. It’s all too easy to let bad operating practices creep into our day-to-day flying. Like the guy said when St. Peter met him at the Pearly Gates, “It never killed me before!”

The problem with inexperience is that you haven't developed the ability to know when to say "no" and your experience level isn't great enough to handle a lot of "what if" scenarios. Nowadays, low-time pilots have a broad range of knowledge, it just doesn't run very deep. That's what experience does - deepens your knowledge and understanding.

I only earn my money on those very infrequent days that I have to tell my boss "no". When the weather is good and when the equipment is operating correctly it doesn't take much of a pilot to do my job. It's when we have to deal with "difficult" weather, "belligerant" equipment, and/or "challenging" airports that I earn my money. In other words, I get paid to say "no". However, they expect me to have the skill and experience to only say "no" when it is the only safe option. Inexperienced pilots get into trouble when they say "no" and it wasn't necessary or when they don't say "no" when it was.

As far as experience goes, there is a big difference between 500 hours of experience and 1 hour of experience repeated 500 times.

Oh well, I'd better get off my soapbox.

The Jetlag Kid

[Arrestahook]

Bose-X wonderful thread ol chap - a real insight.
In answer to your compliment fishing; yes your are an experienced PPL for someone with two years experience, and yes there are dangerous PPLs out there with little currency and irregular and infrequent flying activity. But does that mean they are any the lesser?
250 hours per year is purely a demonstartion of how much money you can afford to throw at your private flying. Others do less but at least they are doing it and keeping our sport/hobby going.
I rekkon I spent 500 hours in my car this year; does that make me an experienced driver? You cannot base this discussion on hours.
Common Bose-x I'm game for a rumble!:E

[S-Works]

Thanks for the affirmation!

The replies have been very interesting and while they wern't a fish for personal compliments they have given food for thought.

It is an intersting comparison between the book that sent me off on this thread "the killing zone" and the comments of others.

And Captain Arrestahook I shall rumble with you over beer later!

[Arrestahook]

I look forward to it-pumped after our heroic victory over the deportees.

[IO540]

Arrestahook

250 hours per year is purely a demonstartion of how much money you can afford to throw at your private flying. Others do less but at least they are doing it and keeping our sport/hobby going

You suggest somebody was fishing for a compliment but you sound like you are looking for a fight allright :O

What you wrote is, with respect, nonsense.

If somebody can fly 250hrs/yr (I do about half that) all well and good - they will build up excellent currency, presumably on type (since somebody doing 250 is hardly self fly hiring a selection of old spamcans). GA needs more people like that; the whole scene needs the incentive to lift its standards up.

Presently the whole scene is based on nearly every PPL chucking it in in no time at all, so there is no pressure for things to improve.

Yes "we" do have the right to be able to fly just 12hrs every 2 years but then we expect schools to be well organised, operating decent planes, employing decent instructors, and have decent planes available for self fly hire... hardly realistic. If only every new PPL (or even a significant % of them) got out there and did some serious flying.... Presently, with a few pilots hanging in there doing a few hours a year, it is like standing on the Titanic.

[QDMQDMQDM]

Interesting point for discussion, but utterly meaningless in reality for all the reasons listed so far in the thread, especially that saying to yourself 'OK, I'm no longer low-time' can lead to mega-complacency.

I will advance my own definition, though:

You are no longer low-time when you know when to be scared and when not to be scared.

QDM

[LowNSlow]

I'm with The Jetlag Kid and QDMx3 as they sum it up perfectly.