Time Limits!

[harveyst]

Hello!
does anybody here know, or know where i can find out, the time limits for completing the PPL. I have done some flying, 6 years ago, and im not sure if the time has passed now for the hours to count?
Thanks Amigos!

[Azm_Skyhigh]

Yours hours still count, but you're responsible for a biennial flight review in order to exercise your PPL privileges. Check with an FAA administrator about your options. Best of luck!

[9 lives]

Letting alone what the national regulations may say about training time limits, from a practical standpoint, they're stale. Earning a PPL is a step along the way toward being a good pilot, so don't count the hours, so much as the skills mastered. Those hours might look good continuing from in a log book, but for any other purpose they're not much use... If you had a PPL with them, they'd still be stale if you wanted to rent a plane....

[Heston]

From a legal point of view they still "count". But any flying school you go to will start you back at the beginning, and quite right too.
Lets say you've done 5 hours of training. Imagine if you had 5 driving lessons 6 years ago and hadn't gone near a car since (not even as a passenger) - you'd need to start again.

[MrAverage]

harveyst

Whatever flying you have done in the past does indeed count toward the 45 minimum hours. It will also mean that you know what you're up against (providing it was not just a 20 minute so called trial lesson). Unless you can train in less than 6 to 9 months you're likely to take 50 or 60 hours to get to licence issue anyway, but you will remember some of what you did before which should help. You obviously still have the desire otherwise you wouldn't have posted.


How many hours did you do?


(P.M. if you prefer)

[foxmoth]

But any flying school you go to will start you back at the beginning, and quite right too.
Not quite the case, the early lessons are the basics - they will need covering again, but the first 5 hours or so can probably be redone in a couple of hours.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

After 13 years of not flying I had to start again at the beginning to get my licence back. But I went through the course at least twice as fast. I'd remembered how to fly, I'd lost all the procedural stuff.

[harveyst]

Thanks everybody! Much appreciated :)

[Tinstaafl]

The hours all count towards meeting the minimum experience requirements, however (!) you will still have to meet the competency requirements. You may or may not be ahead of the skill development game depending how much previous experience you have.

[9 lives]

I was thinking about the "value" of the first flying time I had. I can still remember my first flight, and being allowed to fly the 150, back about 1974. Do I remember what I learned on that flight? Yup, some of it! So it did, and continues to have some value for me. Though, I have since overlaid that with a lot more experience.

Currency? Well, that's somewhat type and experience dependent. The longest I have ever not flown since starting training in 1976 would be once of three months, otherwise never longer than a month. But, on the extreme of being current, I was asked a year or so back to fly a maintenance test flight on a Tiger Moth, having not flown one (nor anything like it) since 1980. And I trained a new owner in a Bellanca Viking, having only flown one for an hour 20 years earlier. I carefully read the flight manual before flying that.

I once asked my insurer how little I would have to fly in a year, before they would actually worry about my skills waning - ten hours a year was the answer - but that would be ten hours flying anything, not type specific.

So yes, the time you flew many years ago will still "count" for your knowledge and sense of being comfortable in the plane, but at best, it'll make your re-entry to piloting a little quicker. But the object of flying, is to fly, so who cares whether you get "credit" for it anyway, you want to be flying in any case! 'Worst is you fly a few more hours on the pre, rather than post side of your PPL...