How many lessons should/can you take in one day?
 

Hi all,

I've decided to start training for a private pilot license and was just wondering how many lessons it would be feasible to take in one day?

I ask because I will be travelling for work to the U.S. and will have a couple of days free time before I head back to the UK.

It's a lot cheaper to fly there and I thought it would also be nice to have the experience of flying in a different country. I've only had my initial "trial" lesson in the UK but is it feasible to take lessons for 3-5 hours a day over the course of 2 days?

Or would I just be confusing myself at this beginning stage?

I took a weeks leave at a time to try and keep training consistent. Managed to do 3x 1 to 1.5 hr lessons a day. The 3rd would always be a judgement call because with the ground school and then flying, it can knacker you out quite quickly.

Depends on you and your preparation, fitness, mental capacity.

I find most can handle 2, only 30% of students can do 3 and actually make progress.

Thanks,

Would it be better to space them out? 2 x 1 hour lessons in the morning and then an hour lesson in the late afternoon? To give me time to read/rest before going back.

P.S. I'm 28, quite fit (play sports regularly/go to the gym) & think I can handle 3 hours but not sure if 5 hours in one day is doable.

The flying school I called said 5 hours is "normal" but obviously they would say that?

I would reckon on two 1-hour lessons a day, at-least early on. You'll need a mental elbow room around those lessons, and also there is briefing and debriefing time needed, and especially when you get into navigation subjects quite a lot of personal preparation.

Of course, you can fly more, but I don't think you'll learn more that way - just spend more money.

G

Yes. 2x 1 hour flights a day is ideal, max 3, only on the odd occasion.

First, check that the school you fly with in the USA is approved by EASA, or the training you do there won't count towards a Licence issued in the UK.

Will this be just a one-off 2 days, or a regular thing?

The reason I ask is that, although doing the first 5 hours in the USA, then the rest back home should work fine, alternating back and forth between two schools will not be practical.

Also, post 9/11, there are lots of Security, and Visa hoops before you will be allowed to train in the USA, and most of them will need to be jumped through before you travel there. Any US School training foreign nationals will be able to help and advise on this.


MJ:ok:

2 x 2 Hour Slots
 

There is a whole bunch of overhead burned up in start, taxi, pre-takeoff checks, waiting to takeoff, transit to practice area followed by the whole thing in reverse. Yes, you do have to learn all that lot properly, but it's all repeated every time you fly.

A longer slot gets you proportionately more time on the lesson material and can get you through the syllabus more efficiently with less total expenditure.

The most prolonged and costly method is flying a single hour once a week.

It'll be a one-off two-day trip, in effect my introduction to the basics.

I don't think there are any EASA-approved schools in Tampa, Florida but even so, I'm hoping to gain some early experience so I wouldn't be that bothered about it not counting towards the minimum 45 hours needed in the UK, which probably will end up being ~55 hours anyway.

A European lesson is exactly that, by extending it you do not cover more of the syllabus, you simply spend more time on that lesson and you have the same number of lessons to do so it can't be more efficient. A student can only absorb about 40 minutes worth of teaching in one lesson so prolonged lessons achieve very little. Two a day with a reasonable break in between is about right. There is a saying, fast to learn, fast to forget!

Sorry if this sounds like a silly question, but if I do manage to find an EASA-approved school, I can't just ask for 2 lessons back-to-back?

You can, but they'll probably refuse if they're being professional.

Human beings just don't learn that continuously and intensively - I didn't, you won't, nor just about anybody else. You need to be fresh enough to learn at the time, and you need time for briefing and debriefing - not to mention for it all to sink in between lessons.

More advanced students may go up to 3-4 hours per day: I occasionally did when doing my CPL, but I had 1000ish hours at that point. Somebody with less than 100 hours, as well as a fair bit of flying recency, in my experience, just can't absorb the learning beyond a couple of hours, separated, per day. They can fly - but anything past about 45 minutes airborne per lesson is mostly just wasted money on an inexperienced pilot.

G

I'm a PPL student and when I got 15~16 hours under me I doubled up on my Saturday lessons to get me over the Solo flight; one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The thinking here was to condense the time between pre-solo lessons (efato - go around - SaSAaA - circuit improvement) to embed these learning points and to double up the good weather opportunities where the CFI and myself were comfortable that the time was right for me to go solo.

After 5 double (solo on the 4th) Saturdays I've now cancelled the remainder of my "double" appointments and retreated back to a single lesson per day for reasons of cost and attention span. I simply didn't feel I was get the right amount of learning for the cost of the 2nd hour on some of the days. "Human Performance and Limitations".

It can be annoying when you have 2 to 3 of weeks break between lessons due to clash of availability etc. but these breaks serve a financial purpose for me as well.

CAA guidance is a maximum of 4hrs training for a student in any one day. Our operations manual also contains this same limit.

As a new pilot you reach saturation point and after that you are burning money with little advancement.

I would agree on 2 lessons maximum.
Although I sometimes have a number (sometimes >5) of students to fly I would find it difficult to fly with the same student 3 times and still give value for money - I also need time to reflect on their performance.

Not being in EASA land, my opinion is that a longer slot allows extra time to work on the lesson. If the student demonstrates immediate competence, then why not introduce the next lesson?

In the more normal case, a student may profit from the opportunity to use a few more opportunities to complete the lesson to a higher standard and build confidence.

I'm curious why being outside EASA would make students, in your view, more capable of absorbing information?

EASA has many faults, but I've not yet noticed them forcing student pilots to have frontal lobotomies.

Unless that means that they did me first? Oh dear !

G

Unless you can get at least some 10-15 hours out of your trip, I wouldn't bother - you will come back to UK, start with new instructor, new plane, new circuit/aerodrome/airspace procedures, you will essentially be back to square one and those few hours you got in US will not matter much. Now of course any flying you can get will work in your favor one way or another, but I'm afraid the value for money will not be there...

as for doing multiple lessons a day - I guess I'm a total wimp, I never took more than one lesson a day, I found it a bit too much even when I was doing a lesson a day few days in a row - I had to combine training with full time job and my head was wrecked after 3rd or 4th day. There's lot's to take away from each lesson, you need your cool down time, you need to do some reading and prepare yourself for the next lesson. The thing is - most people can learn to fly around the circuit in two or three days if they have to, but you're not just preparing for solo circuit - you have to see the bigger picture - you have to develop reflexes and habits that someday will save you from big trouble and you can only develop these properties if you take you take time between lessons

Me too and I couldn't do more than 2-3 training flights per week.

A 2 lesson per day (early morning / late afternoon) should be no problem, if you can self-study, or even take a short nap during the day.

Actually 2 flights per day (with proper briefing and de-briefing) was the normal training speed behind the Iron Curtain for the pre-military flight training, for many decades until the late 80's - worked OK.

Two, maybe three if you're taking it well.

The early hours demand a very high level of mental focus that is surprisingly physically tiring.

Hmmm

Depending where you are flying I also found the heat and humidity in the States debilitating (Northern states not so bad).

I would suggest 2 x 1.5 hour sessions is plenty especially including the pre-brief and de-brief.

and don't forget to make your 'Midfield' call now y'all.................

Arc

FAA people calling "midfield downwind" in Europe is just as funny as UK people asking for "basic service" in France :)

I always report back "QNH" in the USA, just on principle.

G

...in HectoPascals?

I'm good, but not that good.

Reminds me of an alleged (i.e., probably fictional) conversation inbound LGW


"American 45, descend 10,000ft on QNH 1011"

"Err, Gatwick, American 45, could we have that in inches?"

"Certainly American 45, descend 120,000 inches on QNH 1011".

G

Because you have not briefed it!
North American teaching tends to be by osmosis, if you expose the student to things enough times, some of it sinks in. In Europe a more structured building block approach was introduced in 1917. You brief, you fly what you have briefed, then you land and debrief. Conducting unbriefed lessons is a waste of the students time and money.

That is a very pertinent point whopity, thanks for that, which I shall remember.

G

I disagree, I recently attended a flight school academy for FAA instructors and they gave very heavy emphasis to the building block approach to teaching/learning in the Fundementals Of Instruction course.

I did a CPL/IR/ME course in the States. The School has no facilities for briefing (no briefing rooms / whiteboards / whatever). When I attempted to get the instructors to brief me before the flight by asking a series of structured questions about what we were going to do they were clearly out of their depth and had no idea how to deal with it. Many of them had also taught at other schools so it wasn't just this one .....

The expectation was that you would just fly - with the instructor yelling at you whilst 90% of your attention was on flying the aircraft and only 10% on what the instructor was saying ......

As an instructor on other aircraft classes in the UK I found the whole experience a useful exercise in how not to teach!

I'm sure there are schools in the US who brief in the way that we are used to in the UK, but from what I've heard and experienced I'm not convinced it is the norm.

Again, from my experience the "1hr lesson" is a far from universal concept. In the US I've seen ab-initio students on sorties lasting 3 to 4 hours.

Interesting observations about US teaching style. In my limited experience of it (two BFRs before I gave up my piggyback US PPL, both conducted at Arrow Aviation at Danbury, CT) the ground school part was well structured and thorough, but the flying part was on the hoof and not properly briefed - we just bimbled about and did some circuits.

Yes, I'd say that's been my experience also from doing one of my PPLs, and a handful of biennials and rental checkouts in the USA.

Variable - but at its best very high quality airborne instruction, excellent groundschool, minimal briefing of flights.

Mind you, I've come across a few FIs in the UK over the years who don't brief properly - but they seem, thankfully, to be dying out.

G

Back to the question
 

I can't comment on UK vs US methodology, but to get back to the OP's question:

In my early training I once did around 30 hrs in 10 days. For me this was fine, I interspersed flying with theory, and I mixed up the aircraft types (at my behest), so it was never a dull moment and I never felt particularly tired.

Later on I was associated with a school; it was clear to me that people learn quite differently, and what works for some won't work for others. That said I met a number of people who learnt, whoa to go, in a very short time (one did a complete PPL in two weeks). In my view these people were 'better' than those who'd taken say two years to get to PPL, however I suspect it wasn't just the sustained training, personal attributes will have had a marked effect.

If you're a self starter, and a reasonably driven sort of person then I'd certainly try doing several lessons in a day. It's all experience and you'll soon figure out if it works for you or not.

FP.

The only thing at actually matters is whether the student measures up to the written and practical test standards, when eventually tested. I think how the student gets to that point is his own business, not something government should properly dictate. I learned to fly in my own aircraft, in a way my instructor and I agreed on, at very low cost (about $25/hr, the cost of fuel, plus a $40 fixed cost to the instructor regardless of lesson duration). Each and every hour was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot more than being run through a mill. I subsequently did very well when tested. What rigidity does is reduce flexibility, increase cost and discourage many students from getting involved. I guess that does serve as an introduction to what remains of European GA.

I think at the very start you don't want to push it more than 2-3 hours in a day - 2 x 1.5 hour lessons.

Then after the first 10 hours it is easier to move to 2-3 x 1.5 hours.

High volume in the circuit over the few days is ideal :) you may get bored but you will learn it!

The first question the OP should ask is, do you really understand what a lesson is because a lesson is different from an air exercise?

Your question, and most of the responses, seem to view a lesson as time in the air. A lesson starts when you start the pre flight long briefing study and finishes when you have completed the air exercise and then completed the final self study revision and preferably a test upon that exercise.

Lets say (and this is just a time example) you went to the flying school at 9am and started reading and studying the long briefing for Ex 4 and Ex 5 (your first major air exercise) by 10 am you would be ready for the preflight briefing, for your first Ex 4 briefing I would allow 40 mins so at 11 am you should be airborne and by 12 you would be back at the school and with a 30 minute debrief taking you to lunch. At 1 .30 you would be ready to spend 1 - 3 hours revising the last exercise and preparing for the next exercise or Ex 4 part two, so by 3.30 you would be ready for lesson two and you can already see at this stage that to do the job properly you can only do two lessons per working day up until the circuit.

At the circuit stage though once you have got the basics and are not learning basic theory and are really just learning to land that frequency could be increased to 3 -4 air sessions perhaps, depending on the student, their age and abillity and these two aspects have to be measured by the instructor. You should also consider that you will generally learn more before lunch especially in a hot climate.

The first lesson I try to impart upon FI candiates is that if you want to be a good flying instructor you need to understand that an aircraft is the worst possible classroom and that serious learning takes place on the ground and not in tbe air.

Most poorly trained pilots get involved in tbe rush to complete 45 hours rather than the progression of each air exercise, one at a time (usually) at a pace dependant on their own ability and understanding of the completion standard for each lesson and air exercise.

2 lessons
 

I would say two a day. Your brain needs time to process the lessons. A third lesson might be effective some days, but not others. I would fear you're wasting money unless you have a practical test coming up & there is something specific you need to work on and you're on a deadline to get finished (because of work commitments or whatever).

I did my PPL on an Air Cadet Flying Scholarship so young and fit in those days, regular days were three trips, I did the odd day with four and that was definitely over the top, so maybe TRY a three trip, but be ready to cancel the third trip the next day if it is too much! As for back to back trips, do not even go there, if I fly a trip with a student over an hour airborne (not including long Nav trips where nothing new is being taught, just practising what is already known) I can see a rapid deterioration in performance.

Well, in my day.....it was so much cheaper to fly power in the USof A....

If still the case, it can do no harm to enjoy a flying holiday in Florida, and Tampa Bay is uniquely beautiful, the major airport in Tampa the most beautiful and friendly place. There are a number of smaller training places around the bay....spend your time on the flight over to Yankeeland doing your book learning....somebody here will be able to recommend a good text to take with you.

Then when you come back to the UK, you are already experienced in handling. A useful idea would be to decide on your British training place beforehand, find out what type of aircraft is used. For example, Warrior, Cesna 152 (if you are slim) or Tomahawk or whatever. And do your American flying in that type.

Time airborne is never wasted.

Do you want to be a quick pilot or a good pilot?