Who has the most hours?

[pilot773]

I've been curious about something and tried to look up the answer on the net, but to no avail so I thought I'd try you enlightened folks.
Does anyone know who in the history of aviation has the most flight hours? How many hours did that person have?

 

[Andy Neill]

I'll vote on what instead of who. The MIR has been up over 130,000 hours.

I'm guessing the most active airline pilots might have 20,000-30,000 in their logs. Then again, at that level, I doubt they keep logs.

 

[pilot773]

Sorry...let me clarify...I meant the name of the pilot with the most flight hours, not a station or airplane.

 

[Andy Neill]

OK, I'll open the bidding at 22,700 Michael Buckley ATP - AMEL - 747 - 727 - Citation 500/550 Fountain Hills, AZ and looking for a job evidently because his resume' is posted on the web. Can anyone top that?

I wonder if he is related to Jerry Buckley who gave me my first plane ride in a V- tailed Bonanza at Falcon Field (Mesa, AZ) in 1960.

 

[UPS Capt]

22,700tt wouldn't even be close. I think the record is up around the 50 to 60 thousand hr range.

 

[Andy Neill]

Names! pilot773 MUST have NAMES!

 

[charley varrick]

I don't recall the name, but I remember reading about some guy who flew power line patrol up until he kicked the bucket in his eighties. Guy flew 6 days a week 7 to 8 hours a day from his youth, or something absurd like that. Anyway, he had, if I recall correctly, in the high 30,000+ to low 40,000 range.

 

[flyingtoilet]

I personally know a guy with about 34,000 TT, he has been an instructor all of his life and owns his own airport. He is in his seventies.

Interesting screen name Charley Varrick, do you chew gum a lot like he did?

 

[UPS Capt]

Clay Lacy (ex-United airlines and Pro Pilot magazine fame) "claims to have around 45,000.

 

[captjim]

Interesting screen name Charley Varrick, do you chew gum a lot like he did?

Better yet, did you do it north by northwest?

 

[bigD]

John Deakin over on AvWeb claims 35K hours. Of course, he readily admits that over half of that is in the 747, where he's commonly just sitting around watching Otto fly for hours on end, or sleeping in the back. That column where he talks about his tens of thousands of hours that in his mind mean essentially jack squat is pretty funny.

 

[bobbysamd]

Most hours

There was an old-time pilot whose first name was Max - very well known, I can't remember the last name at the moment, though, had a book written about him - who had something like 40,000 hours.

I read of at least a couple of old-time airline pilots in Flying the Line who had upwards of 30,000 hours. These were gentlemen who started as airmail pilots in open-cockpit biplanes and ended their careers flying DC-7s and Connies and maybe the first four-engined jets! Wouldn't they have had stories to tell!

 

[A Squared]

The Powerline Patrol pilot mentioned in a previous post was written up in AOPA pilot as the pilot with the most hours. It seems to me that he had 60,000 hours. I can't remember for sure or remember the issue it appeared in. No offense to anyone but his time wasn't in a long haul 74, it was just about all low level stick and rudder time in a j-3 or some other cub.

Hope someone with a beter memory can come up with this article.

regards

 

[eriknorth]

Yeah, It's Ed Long. He is 83 years old, and currently holds the world record of 64,000 hours. I'm almost there...
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9812/31/tt.record.pilot/

 

[ms6073]

I'll vote on what instead of who. The MIR has been up over 130,000 hours.

Um, the Mir Space Station returned to Earth when controllers ordered a final thrust on March 22, 2001, deorbiting the Mir space station into the Pacific Ocean!

 

[HU-16]

I'm just wondering, doesn't some professional golfer have a lot of hours? Maybe Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicholaus(spelling), if I remember correctly they had alot of hours for not flying for a living.

 

[BradG]

I know a guy in the Kansas City area, who i was told when he filled out an Insurance App. for a C421, under Total Time he put 45000+. And he's still flying.

 

[HMR]

Adam Berg (DPE at VNY) claims to have 63,000hrs. Don't try ro do the math. I made the mistake of questioning how this could be possible and had to sit through a re-telling of all 63,000hrs.

 

[banned username 2]

I'm just wondering, doesn't some professional golfer have a lot of hours? Maybe Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicholaus(spelling), if I remember correctly they had alot of hours for not flying for a living.

Arnold Palmer has a Citation X... He does fly it, but I don't think he has any outrageous number of hours.... probably a few thousand...

 

[Kaman]

Flight time

Hello,
No offense, but I wonder who has more interesting tales to tell... The overseas 744 skipper with 20K in his logbook or 60K flying 500' AGL and below? Interesting question to ponder, and I wouldn't think that there would be much question about how much of that 60K was on AP vice the "managed flight" of the 744 crew. Wasn't it a UAL 747 F/O that botched a MGTOW departure from SFO because, "aircraft handling skills are seriously degraded". Once again the quality vs. quantity argument loses it's validity.

Regards,

ex-Navy rotorhead

 

[LR25]

The guy that flew powerline partol had around 60-65K.

Before he died Piper gave him a brand new saratoga or something and he declined and said he would rather have a new supercub. He did get the supercub. That it what he used for partol out of Montgomery AL.

 

[FlyingSig]

Adam Berg (DPE at VNY) claims to have 63,000hrs. Don't try ro do the math. I made the mistake of questioning how this could be possible and had to sit through a re-telling of all 63,000hrs.

I'm sure the stories included teaching Patrick Swazie (sp?) and flying and crashing Sinatra's airplane..... By far the most intersting checkride I have ever taken in my life....

 

[avbug]

Sixty thousand is all good and well, but as we all know, hours by themselves mean nothing. Squat. Zippo.

More importantly, who has the most hours, in flight, while wearing plaid? This narrows the field considerably, and more properly balances the playing field. Not everyone is employed chasing powerlines or in a 747, but everyone can wear plaid.

Or how about most bannanas consumed in flight? Most pencils broken while copying clearances? Most fillings lost while chewing gum during the enroute phase of flight?

How about the most fillings lost while chewing gum and eating a banana, by someone copying clearances enroute, who is wearing plaid?

Now add up the hours, where they really count. I believe you'll find that Edward Hargrove of Maramoke, KS, wins handily, and he has a disadvantage going in. He's blind (not legally blind...completely blind), and one of the only individuals issued an unrestricted pilot certificate and medical who is allowed to act as pilot in command while blind.

Mr. Hargrove no longer has teeth (pulled after the fillings went), and may no longer be competitive. It's assumed that the blindness accounts for the wearing of plaid on a continuing basis (Closet Scot?). The total number of hours (32, 451) aloft is high not because Mr. Hargrove follows powerlines or flies the oceanic routes, but because being blind, he's been unable to find the runway exactly 10,241 times in the past fifty years. The broken pencils are beside the point, he can't see to write. No one to date can explain the banana.

Let's hear it for Mr. Hargrove.

 

[TurboS7]

Are we talking logbook time or butt time as in time aloft. When the shuttle guys circle the earth does all the time count or just when they are at their assigned positions on the aircraft. We have a couple of FA's working for us that flew the DC-6's and Connie's for a major airline. How much time do they have, does that count. I am sure that some of our commuters on this board will show a lot of butt time in airplanes. I kept a butt time log just for fun one year, I found that for every hour I flew I spent another hour on my butt in an airplane. 50/50 I flew 1600 hours of butt time that year, no wonder I have hemroids.

 

[charley varrick]

Avbug,

Are you Dave Barry? You could definitely use his tag-line. I'd compliment you some more, but I gotta get back to my 5th attempt at landing this sim blindfolded while eating watermelon without swallowing a single seed. (Sorry, the vendor was out of bananas--said there was frost in Costa Rica or something.)

 

[flx757]

Turbo..

FAs that flew DC-6s and Connies for a major airline??? YIKES!!!! Now that's a frightening thought.

 

[TurboS7]

They are both guys and really cool, in their 80's if you can believe it. They are latin and can really dance, they steal all the FA's away from us on the dance floor, but they deserve them. LOL

 

[cjh]

BradG,

You fly out of KC? OJC by chance?

Jack, the pilot to whom you referred (I think) does indeed have those kinds of hours, along with 13 type ratings. Pretty amazing guy. He's 77, looks like he's 60, still jogs daily, and flies pretty much 5+ days a week. About a month ago, he went up with a fellow pilot to do some aerobatics. If you've never flown with him, he's worth getting acquainted with.