A cynic once said: There’s only a person in the front left seat of a plane so there’s accountability should it crash (otherwise you’d just let computers fly it, human error is one of the greatest causes for plane accidents)……..to that end, a lot of emphasis is placed on pilot experience and that experience is traceable primarily through their log book. The integrity of that record is held against the pilots integrity and as such each and every page of a log book is signed by the pilot as being true and correct.
Downside is paper records are rubbish for keeping live totals & statistics. Therefore to date I’ve never bothered totaling up my hours flown, how long it took before I went solo, which planes I’ve flown the most….. etc. etc. etc.
Upon completion of circuits, which I consider a milestone, I decided to sit down, type it all up and see where we’re at with the numbers:
| Total Flight time to Solo | 19 Hrs 45 Min |
| Circuit Time to Solo | 10 Hrs 9 Min |
| Total Duel (to date) | 26 Hrs 15 Min |
| Total Solo (to date) | 3 Hrs 20 Min |
They say the average is to go solo somewhere around hour 15, sure I’m past that, but I never said I was doing this to set records. I’m to busy to fly every week, but if you want to tick boxes in the shortest time possible, I’m sure that flying 3 and sometimes 4 times a month is the key.
Solo Time is an interesting one, remember when I didn’t ask how or why I was back to 40 minutes still to fly in my final circuits lesson? By the numbers in my log book I was actually at 2.5 hours before setting out on that final lesson solo, but if I don’t include my first solo (15 minutes in the log book) in the count towards 2.5 hours. Then on that final lesson I had exactly 20 minutes left to get, which ties up with a previous debrief. So I think somewhere communication wires have got mixed up and I went out to get 40 minutes (and got 55), when I needed only 20. You won’t hear me complaining, flying solo is a lot of fun! It’s what the whole show is about….
Aircraft Flown
Nothing here came as much of a suprise:
| G-SHWK | |
| G-HERC | |
| G-UFCB | |
| G-GLOC |
Note this counts solo & duel sessions seperatly, so doesn’t give you number of lessons if added up. I’ve also strictly only flown G-SHWK 17 times in the day, one was a night flight and my time in G-GLOC was spent mostly upside down 🙂
Average Flight Time Per Lesson
This comes in at 55 minutes.
So at this particular check point in the flight training, those are the numbers. If nothing else it might serve as a ball park estimate for anyone learning at a similar rate what it’s going to cost them to get to this point.