Time to solo; now versus the "good old days"
 

I know there are hundreds of threads asking how long it takes to solo, this isn't another one of them!

Looking at the PPL(A) syllabus there looks to be 10/11 sets of exercises to be flown before beginning circuits proper. With a new pilot that's going to take somewhere between 10 - 15 hours at a minimum, which ties in roughly with the average that you hear quoted on here.

But on a thread on here recently someone mentions sending a student solo after 5 hours, then says it was "more years ago than they would care to remember". And when mooching through some aviation history I came across Billy Barker a WWI fighter ace who - despite apparently not being a very talented pilot - "commenced pilot training at Netheravon, flying solo after 55 minutes of dual instruction."!!So putting aside people converting and talking about your average new pilot are people now generally flying solo later than in the past? Obviously not the exterme past but 10 / 20 years ago. And is that because of necessity (increased cockpit workload through radios and standard checks for example) or over regulation / caution?

Andrew,

I happened to have my old logbook on my desk as I read your post.

I learned to fly in a Piper Colt at White Waltham in 1966 on an RAF Flying Scholarship. My first flight was on the 3rd September, and I went solo four days later, after eight flights, including one in a Chipmunk for the mandatory spinning exercise. Total time 7:35. Exercises: Famil, 3 to 13. The last three flights before solo were circuits (12 and 13).

The continuity probably helped a lot and we operated non-radio, which also reduced the work-load, but my time wasn't particularly remarkable. Other members of my course all went solo with about the same number of hours.

I don't know if there is any proven trend in 'hours to solo' and its all pretty personal.

Where I did my PPL it is not uncommon (though not the norm either) for younger students to go solo after 5-10 hours instruction. Comparing this to the next closest school where the same type of student will probably take closer to 20 I would say the biggest factor is the airport/location.

In the first it is an uncontrolled field, with lots of airspace around it but little to get in the way of doing exercises. Then when it comes to circuits, on a quiet day you can do plenty in an hour. Looking through my logbook I see one hour block time where we did 12 circuits.

At the other place it is at a controlled airport with scheduled traffic which means that much more time is going to be spent to complete the same amount of instruction.

Edit just to add that personally I went solo after 16.8 hours. This included 1 hour of 'trial flight' that was 2 years prior to starting lessons and it took over 6 months to do because I was still doing my A levels and could only afford occasional lessons. It also was across 4 aircraft types (for numerous reasons). The reason I am adding this is to show some of the personal factors that will change it. Could I have gone solo in less time if I did all the lessons in one week and stuck to one aircraft type and didn't have school exams at the same time? Maybe - but it's irrelevant because it was not the case.

'Time to Solo' isn't just about a certain number of hours, it's about the students ability, levels of confidence and standard of tuition. It is a bit of schoolboy thing saying you went solo after so many hours and I speak from experience on that one. In essence it is about being confident in your own ability. You are ready when you are ready.

First lesson 15/07/1978, familiarisation.

12 more lessons covering effects of controls, straight & level, climbing & descending turns, take off, circuits, stall, spin, more circuits.

First solo 11/08/1978 at 11.5 hours.

GFT passed (so PPL achieved) 23/02/1979 at 48 hours exactly including the GFT flight.

Others did it in a similar time. Some took a lot longer. Weather got in the way a few times or it'd have been done in a shorter time. Factors which kept it as short as it was:

a) I was in my 20s, so young enough to learn new skills quickly.

b) It was at Barton, a club grass field where circuits could be piled up quickly and no hanging around for ATC or traffic.

c) Gaps between lessons were kept as short as I could manage bearing in mind I had other stuff to do, like earning a living and all the usual domestic stuff.

I had 8 different instructors during those 48 hours, 5 different ones before going solo. I regard having different instructors as an advantage as you get to appreciate there's more than 1 way to skin any cat. And it teaches you to manage your own progress. It was not unusual to pre-flight the C150 and then sit in it for maybe 1/2 hour waiting for the (late) instructor to turn up from his previous lesson. No pre-flight brief - he'd jump in with "Hi SSD, where are you at now? What do you need to do?".

Worked well for me.

Making comparisons between what happens today and what happened many years ago in wartime is nonsense - trainee pilots were then expendable to a degree that is not tolerated today.


But did you know that it is perfectly possible to get a pilot's licence in the UK without any dual instruction at all?

Heston
You clearly want someone to ask - How? So I am!

I too was one of the lucky ones that got their PPL on a Flying Scholarship. At AST Perth in 1972. Because of a paperwork problem with my medical certificate they couldn't let me go solo until I'd done nearly 10 hours.

But my room mate went solo after about 6 hours. At 7h 30 he asked his instructor if he could enter the local flying club's spot landing competition. He entered, and he won! Lots of recent landing practice and, of course, significant natural ability.

I seem to recall that everyone on the course was solo in less than 10 hours. That was around 12 of us.

There's a lot more in the syllabus these days - but not that has to be covered pre-solo. If no-one is going solo in less than 10 hours, I can only suppose that instructors have got more cautious.

Pre solo, I see I was signed off for:

Action in the event of fire
EFATO
Spin Recovery
Stall recovery
Overshoot action
Overshoot and Landing
Engine Starting
Valid Pilot's Licence (I think this meant 'medical OK' )

I'm sure spin recovery is not in the pre-solo syllabus - has anything else been added? Looks like I was stalling and spinning on my third flight from the exercise numbers!

Microlights - there is no duel stipulation. Not sure how the skills test works - but I suppose that wouldn't be "instruction"...

"In the old days" people knew what risk is, learned to handle it and accepted the probability to fail and die.
"Nowadays" we celebrate an unhealthy denial of evolution with a tendency to fully comprehensive coverage.

If we would have behaved like we do today, we still be protozoan to bob up and down in primordial ooze ...

Microlights?
 

Microlights it is. Instruction and test can both be done solo (in a single seat aircraft). I kid you not. But it would be a brave instructor who would take it on these days.

Just had a look at my logbook and I went solo after 6hrs and 6 flights as the instructor consolidated some exercises. This was in the 1990s. Maybe he was trying to get rid of me but I’m still around, nearly 20,000hrs later... :)

If there are noticeable differences between 'then' and 'now' it is due to a current sense of risk awareness.

To-day we are risk averse. When I flew my first solo on the 30th Sept. 1962 at Biggin Hill in a Chipmunk after six hours of dual, the phrase 'risk averse' had no meaning.

If you were serious you burnt the midnight oil with continuous study. Bill Gunston's "The Theory & Practise of Powered Flight" was my bible. Heaven knows how many times I read it before I got near a control column.

When I look back to that time and remember how trusting to the point of blase our instructors were asking us to do the things that we did, I am amazed. It wouldn't happen to-day !

With previous gliding experience, I started the PPL course on a Jackeroo at Thruxton at 20.15 on 27/07/64. At 12.40 on 30/07/64, after 2H 55M dual, including stalls on a Tiger, I went solo. Passed GFT at 19.15 on 21/08/64. Course finished. Instructors were excellent, and so was the system - when I had a landing problem I was passed on to someone who could fix it.
A Very Simple Single Engined Aircraft, with no brakes, electrics (other than mags) radio, flaps, DI.
And a busy training airfield. with no ATC, and 8? Jackeroos as well as 2 or more Piper Colts.

The big difference between the 60s and now it seemed to me, is that then, training wasn't big business.

USA PPL fatal accident rate was almost 4 times higher per 100,000 hrs flown in the 1950's, as compared to today. So if everyone had such great training and solo'd in so few hours how come they ended up killing themselves at such a high rate ?

I find the "training was so much better in the old days, why are today's instructors so Shyte" posts getting rather tiresome.

Some things were better back in the day, somethings were worse. New is not automatically bad, old is not auto automatically good.

My experience has been that, except for the small number of naturally gifted, or totally inept students, time to solo has very little correlation to how good a new PPL is.

The longer I instructed the trend for my students has been time to solo is up, but time to PPL flight test is down, and flight test scores are up. I learned how important the presolo flights were in learning the fundamentals of aircraft control. Rushing through the early exercises invariable comes home to bite you later in the training.

when I soloed people, I had to make sure that if the airport ''closed'' while they were soloing, they had at least one other option they were familiar with.

when I was teaching it was below the TCA (now called b) and they had to have a full understanding of where they were and where they could not go.

when I was checking out people who had never been to this particular airfield, it took them a couple of hours to understand what they needed to in order to fly safely at that field.

So it takes longer at certain places than at other places. Some planes have more technical things too that you must be aware of rather than the super simple planes of yesteryear (think cub).


So, it takes you what it TAKES YOU at the field , with the plane and the weather you are dealt.


Don't worry about it unless you get well past 30 hours of dual.

I had one student who flew fine, but his primary language was Japanese and his problem was understanding the radio in english. So he became very frustrated. well, that's fliife ;-)

The problem with the "old school" argument is that its meaningless as there is always someone else who can "out old school" you, which inevitably can be argued all the way back to those ultimate hours before solo chaps Orville & Wilbur, and perhaps even then Preston Watson would tut tut them with the "back in the old days" nonsense!

I soloed on hang gliders on my first lesson. It was only a short hop - a few metres. I don't have my logbook any more but I'm guessing the first time I ran off the top of a hill I had just a few minutes of actual flight time, an awful lot of ground handling, and several dozen take-offs and landings.

I've never flown a powered weight-shift aircraft and I'd not choose to do so solo for the first time, but I suspect it wouldn't be suicidal.