Average time for first solo?

[Folding_Expert]

I've heard of people taking their first solo flight with as little as 5 hours logged, which seems rather scary to me. However, it seems the median is around 10, judging by the comments on this board and others.

Due to whatever reason, my flight school tends to average around 15-20 hours, which is about where I will be in the next few weeks. To me, this seems about right, considering that I am just now beginning to feel confident enough to be able to fly the pattern without anyone's assistance.

I apologize if this topic has been beaten with a stick, but what are your thoughts on this?

 

[greygoose]

It doesnt matter what the average solo time is, what is more important is when your instructor thinks your ready. Yes some people can solo at a very low time, but ideally you must ask were they trained properly on the requirements?
In addition you need to remember every schools location is different. Some schools has to have their flights go out further to get to a safe practice area, which could easily add 10 to 15 mins onto a flight.
To answer your question, I would say the average that I have seen from the schools that I have seen and the area I had come from is 12 to 20 hours. I have even heard of a student up to 50 something hours by time they soloed.

 

[midlifeflyer]

The fact that people learn at different rates is pretty irrelevant to the end results.

On top of that, time to solo is subject to a whole bunch of variables some of which are out of the pilot's control. Time to solo generally increases as regulations change. The list of pre-solo tasks that existed 20 years ago was smaller than today. Flight schools and CFIs will to varying degrees require more than the minimum skill set the regulation requires. A pilot who flies 5 times a week will solo much sooner than one who flies once every two weeks. Pilots who learn to fly at rural non-towered airports with little traffic and get to see a normal traffic pattern every single time they fly will tend to solo sooner than the student at the busy Class D with 7 in the pattern, who gets to see what a normal pattern looks like maybe once every 5 flights, and has to learn to deal with rapid fire communications and weird instructions ("Cessna 1234X, make a 360 on downwind for spacing").

Point was brought home to me with an excellent student. I teach out of a very busy Class D. My student was pretty close to solo, but we still had some work to do. He went to visit family in a rural area and decided to take a local lesson. The CFI offered to solo him after one flight. The issues of whether the CFI really covered everything that the regulations required him aside, I know that in the context of =that= airport, my student =was= ready to solo.

 

[User546]

I agree a lot with what Mark says.

And to add to that, I always ask my students when I first start flying with them about what their short term goal is. Are they training just to solo as quickly as possible, or is that not as important to them. If they tell me they are training jsut to solo as quickly as possible, we usually sit down and have a good talk.

We have a guy on field who instructs that reguarly puts his students up to solo in the 5 hour range. Whether thats safe, smart, and following all the regs the way they were intended - its not up to me to judge.

But heres my viewpoint on it. The first few hours are critical to a new student who has never flown before. These first few hours is where you cement the building blocks on which all their future training is going to build upon, and grow from. I don't want to focus on just one area, for instance getting them proficient enough JUST to do three touch n goes. I make sure they are comfortable with stalls, they have good basic attitude instrument flying (turns to headings, level offs, altitude/airspeed maintenance, etc.) and keep them focused on the big picture. You got to make the student feel as confident as you can before sending them loose. I typically make the students do a decent job at slow flight, steep turns, stalls, and traffic pattern ops, before sending them on to solo. Thru those maneuevers it's rounding out there capabilities and understanding more of the machine that they're flying when their instructor won't be there with them.

My students average solo in the 20 hour range. But once they solo, we move right into X-C work,and once that is done, we then just hammer out the maneuvers some more and get him proficient enough to take the checkride.

And because of that, I have yet to send a student up for solo that I haven't been 100% confident in, and can honestly say I've never been nervous watching a student go around the pattern that first time!

 

[I.P. Freley]

I wasn't sure about when I soloed so I went back and looked... I soloed at 24hrs and got my PP with 63hrs TT. Looking back at when I was an active CFI (at the same airport I got my PP), I'd say that was fairly low time on average because of the nature of the airport, an extremely busy Class D (KFRG) field. The weekend warrior type student usually needed 35hrs to solo, if memory serves, and about 85hrs TT to get the PP.

 

[sqwkvfr]

I wasn't sure about when I soloed so I went back and looked... I soloed at 24hrs and got my PP with 63hrs TT. Looking back at when I was an active CFI (at the same airport I got my PP), I'd say that was fairly low time on average because of the nature of the airport, an extremely busy Class D (KFRG) field. The weekend warrior type student usually needed 35hrs to solo, if memory serves, and about 85hrs TT to get the PP.

Holy shiite, Batman!!

85 hours!!

 

[User546]

Holy shiite, Batman!! 85 hours!!

Try going to Pan Am! Most students I started out with averaged 100-110 hour when they got their PPL!!!!

Kind of seems backwards that a school who promises you to get your license faster then anywhere else would take twice as long! And thats not no weekend warrior stuff. This is flying twice a day, five days a week!!

 

[Flechas]

85 Hrs? Danm!!!
In DAB most of my students soloed around 15-20 and got their PPL between 45-55....

 

[I.P. Freley]

What can I say, we didn't have people who were devoting themselves entirely to getting their PPL... These weren't people heading for a career as pilots, and they were considered devoted if they flew 5hrs/mo (I had up to 30 "regular" students at any given time). I'd spend the first half of any lesson bringing them back up to the point they were at the last time they flew... Giving them about 30mins of time towards improvement on any given day. Not to mention spending a quarter of any lesson simply waiting for takeoff or waiting to be called back by the tower at the end of the lesson. It wasn't unusual, on a weekend, to be one of ten airplanes in the pattern, and you don't get many touch-and-goes when you're on a 12-mile downwind, or number 15 for callback while circling a VFR checkpoint outside the class D.

 

[sqwkvfr]

Good God! When I git my PPL, I was a "weekend warrior" and had to take a couple of months off because I screwed up my knee...and I still soloed in 10 and passed the checkride with 43.

Then again, my instructor was a real stand-up guy...he's sit with me for 30-45 minutes discussing whatever and refused to charge me for any ground.