Comments on: The July “Since You Asked” poll: How many hours to solo?

By: Rudolph

Rudolph — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:26:27 +0000

It took me 36 hours to solo for various reasons. One, I started in rotorcraft, so it took me some time just to learn the dance known as hovering. Two, work and finances precluded taking lessons as frequently as I would have liked and caused me to spend a good portion of each lesson re-learning skills from prior lessons. It was not until I took out a loan for flight training that I was able to fly as often as necessary to progress towards solo and my private pilot rating. Unfortunately, but understandably, those loans are no longer being offered by Sallie Mae.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:41:05 +0000

My training was frustrating since I began when I was 14, having to wait 2 years to solo I was already at 60hrs when I first went up alone!

By: Tom Little

Tom Little — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:59:16 +0000

Flight training has become more expensive, cost per hour has doubled in the past 10 years. Are students flying less frequently? Training aircraft are now more advanced, students are being taught airmanship plus GPS & glass panel.
Pipers & Cessnas were more basic, however you learned 3 basics:
1) Aviate 2) Navigate 3) Communicate!

By: David

David — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:56:44 +0000

Well I have slightly over 20 hours in, and haven’t solo’ed
I’m “older” ( 50+) and my training is being done in a 1940 Taylorcraft
with conventional landing gear, and brakes only on the pilot’s side.

While I am eager to solo, I’ve got some extra hoops to jump through
that the average student. One nice thing is that I pay a LOT less for
each lesson than average too.