age at solo vs hours to solo

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Brad W

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Jim K said:
If you're looking for numbers, I soloed around 20 hours, and finished up around 60. I was 38. A rule of thumb I've heard is about half your age is the number of hours to solo. It seems to be true of most people I've talked to who have gone through training in the last decade or so.....
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In this other thread Jim K posted something I found fascinating
I don't recall hearing that rule of thumb before.
Let me see... I was 24 years old + almost a month
and soloed at about 14 hours... fairly close to half....ratio approx 0.58
that was over a period of about 3 months...and one of those months right in the middle I didn't fly at all.....
 
shoot...meant to do a poll so I could gather statistics....but screwed it up

oh well, I see no way to add it now.

so what's your ratio?
 
48 years old
18 hours to solo
5 months - averaged less than one flight a week

I guess that's .38?
 
No correlation. I was 38. Solo in 8.5 hours, check ride at 40.4. Had a fair number of students do the same. It's all about how bad you want it
 
Hmmm, let' see.

I was 39 years old. That would mean solo in 19.5 hours. I soloed at 13.1. (For me the interesting part of the story is that it was the 2nd lesson with a new instructor and I hadn't flown for 2 weeks.)

I'm not sure it really tells us much.
 
16th birthday and 10 hrs? Still, a pretty good rule of thumb that is likely not very linear at the extremes.

my son, 9 hrs and 18 yrs old… whoa!
 
14.6 hours to solo and I was 20 years old. Although I had 2 instructors that had issues/moved on before my 3rd instructor signed me off, I'm betting if I had that 1 instructor from the start it would've been sooner and more in line with the half your age premise.
 
The British Gliding Association used to say that if you were age 20 or younger, you could expect 20 flights to solo. For every year of your age beyond 20, add one flight.

yes, age does factor into one’s ability to learn. I see retired airline pilots with some of the same struggles as a 1000-hour flight instructor trying to learn a new jet.
 
If you had an emergency during your first solo at 8 hours how do you think it would have gone?
 
28 years old - 8.1 hours
several short lessons per week.
 
16 and 8 here, so exactly half.

dmspilot said:
If you had an emergency during your first solo at 8 hours how do you think it would have gone?
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Pretty well, I think... but it was a 5400' runway and I'd been flying R/C for years, so forced landings were nothing new.
 
dmspilot said:
If you had an emergency during your first solo at 8 hours how do you think it would have gone?
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I think I would have survived. But that is speculation. Glad I didn’t have to find out.
My primary instructor was one of the finest aviators and CFII I’ve ever known with over 10,000 hours in piston aircraft.
There wasn’t a lesson after the first one he didn’t pull the power.

What I can factually tell you is I experienced two engine failures, the first one with less than 200 hours TT on takeoff at 300’ AGL.
Both plane and pilot survived both without a scratch.
I can also factually tell you my training he had drilled into me became automatic and took over at the most stressful time. I honestly felt no fear during either emergency. Only after I was on the ground and things were “more quiet” did I have any nerves about the deal.
 
dmspilot said:
If you had an emergency during your first solo at 8 hours how do you think it would have gone?
Click to expand...
I don’t know how many hours he had, but I know of a student who had engine parts come through the cowling of the 152 on his first solo. Nice landing in a field.

So yes, failures CAN happen on that flight.
 
I don't remember where I picked that one up at, but it seems to be about as accurate as any other rule of thumb. One thing I've noticed in talking to people (not that I've done an exhaustive study) is that those who've been flying for 30+ years typically soloed in far fewer hours. I get the impression that solo used to be "can you fly the plane", and over time has become "can you fly the plane if something goes wrong", which is probably change for the better honestly.
 
Jim K said:
I don't remember where I picked that one up at, but it seems to be about as accurate as any other rule of thumb. One thing I've noticed in talking to people (not that I've done an exhaustive study) is that those who've been flying for 30+ years typically soloed in far fewer hours. I get the impression that solo used to be "can you fly the plane", and over time has become "can you fly the plane if something goes wrong", which is probably change for the better honestly.
Click to expand...
I think it may be that planes and airspace are more complex also.
 
Jim K said:
I don't remember where I picked that one up at, but it seems to be about as accurate as any other rule of thumb. One thing I've noticed in talking to people (not that I've done an exhaustive study) is that those who've been flying for 30+ years typically soloed in far fewer hours. I get the impression that solo used to be "can you fly the plane", and over time has become "can you fly the plane if something goes wrong", which is probably change for the better honestly.
Click to expand...
I don’t totally disagree with this.

Something I have noticed among millennials and generation z is generally they aren’t nearly as comfortable with operating machinery as previous generations. I think this also plays into higher pre-solo hours.
There aren’t nearly as many people coming off the farms as there used to be. In my case I grew up on a farm and was operating large tractors and various equipment in my early teens as well as driving. An airplane was another machine.

Look at cars.
How many people student pilot age have ever learned to drive a vehicle with a manual transmission, drum brakes, manual choke, no power steering? A generation ago this was the norm. People inadvertently developed some degree of innate mechanical ability through everyday life.

I don’t think my situation wasn’t unusual for my generation or the previous generations of people learning to fly.
 
I was 22 and solo in 12 hours was under the GI bill .
 
yeah good point...I should have also asked what year did you solo. Might have made some interesting graphs with enough data points....Oh well....too late now
 
I was 45 in 2016, I soloed at about 20 hours. I flew 16 hours with my first instructor over about 3 months. He was not a good instructor for me. Did checkride at 54 hours. Got a tail wheel endorsement in 2.3 hours. That instructor was excellent, felt like I was flying with a lifelong friend.

some instructors are great, some not do much. Personalities sometimes mesh, if not it doesn’t go as well.
 
Jim K said:
I get the impression that solo used to be "can you fly the plane", and over time has become "can you fly the plane if something goes wrong",...
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I disagree…30+ years ago, I had trained several emergencies, including multiple engine-outs to landing before solo.
 
dmspilot said:
If you had an emergency during your first solo at 8 hours how do you think it would have gone?
Click to expand...
Age 17 1/2 with 7.8 hrs. J-3 cub. Once, solo at about 10 hrs tt, had a minor glitch with elevator trim stuck up. No sweat, continued the session.
 
MauleSkinner said:
I disagree…30+ years ago, I had trained several emergencies, including multiple engine-outs to landing before solo.
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there’s a piper ad from mid 40s with the message of 6 hours to solo.

I have to go look but roughly 40 years ago, 6 or 8 hours. Emergency training was an intellectual exercise (where would you go, why?) then

now of course there’s lots of power off abeam numbers downwind landing practice
 
Randomskylane said:
there’s a piper ad from mid 40s with the message of 6 hours to solo.

I have to go look but roughly 40 years ago, 6 or 8 hours. Emergency training was an intellectual exercise (where would you go, why?) then

now of course there’s lots of power off abeam numbers downwind landing practice
Click to expand...
I guess then, as now, it depended heavily on the individual instructor.
 
Brad W said:
In this other thread Jim K posted something I found fascinating
I don't recall hearing that rule of thumb before.
Let me see... I was 24 years old + almost a month
and soloed at about 14 hours... fairly close to half....ratio approx 0.58
that was over a period of about 3 months...and one of those months right in the middle I didn't fly at all.....
Click to expand...

26 years, 13 hours
 
Redneckpilot said:
How many people student pilot age have ever learned to drive a vehicle with a manual transmission, drum brakes, manual choke, no power steering? A generation ago this was the norm. People inadvertently developed some degree of innate mechanical ability through everyday life.
Click to expand...

Anti-theft device against younger thieves:

iu
 
I was 28, soloed in 9 hrs, and took my check ride at 43 total hrs

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
 
I was 34 and soloed at 11 hours. If I was quicker at picking up physical skills and not nervous (crosswinds and light turb), it would’ve been at nine hours. The knowledge part and radio use was a piece of cake.
 
Age 27 and 7.7 hours. But I agree that the approach was different 48 years ago, with the emphasis being basic flight control then take-offs and landings, plus tower communications (including emergencies in those activities only). Weather, navigation, flight planning, and many other aspects were addressed after solo. There was considerably less to learn back then as well.
 
23 years old and 10 hours at solo.
 
I was 18. Probably 40 hours and a year in? Lots of instructors because that's how the school worked. I asked for a time and they scheduled me with whomever was there.

I soloed on the 3rd flight after being assigned an instructor.

You don't know what you don't know. If I was on the internet in 1992 I'm sure I would have quit (or received the advice to choose 1 CFI much earlier).
 
I was 27 years old, solo was 14.3 hours. Also changed airplanes during that time from a Citabria to Cessna 150. Check ride was right at 40 hours and it took 4 months from first flight to private. I flew twice a week. Hey, I'll be coming up on 34 years in December.
 
Redneckpilot said:
I don’t totally disagree with this.

Something I have noticed among millennials and generation z is generally they aren’t nearly as comfortable with operating machinery as previous generations. I think this also plays into higher pre-solo hours.
There aren’t nearly as many people coming off the farms as there used to be. In my case I grew up on a farm and was operating large tractors and various equipment in my early teens as well as driving. An airplane was another machine.

Look at cars.
How many people student pilot age have ever learned to drive a vehicle with a manual transmission, drum brakes, manual choke, no power steering? A generation ago this was the norm. People inadvertently developed some degree of innate mechanical ability through everyday life.

I don’t think my situation wasn’t unusual for my generation or the previous generations of people learning to fly.
Click to expand...

Excellent point. I remember my instructor being flabbergasted that I understood the idea of steering with my feet and differential braking. Growing up on a tractor will do that for you. I also understood engines, magnetos, carburetors, and fuel mixture. Radios came easily thanks to 20 years as a volunteer firefighter.

Unfortunately I'm also a movement moron. Any physical activity is hard for me to pick up. Can't hula hoop or cartwheel or waterski. Took me three years to get up on a wakeboard. Landings took me forever to figure out.
 
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50yrs old and solo at 26 - I think. So darned close to 0.5 ... interesting!
 
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