Flight Training Cadence

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Joe Williamson

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Joe
Hey Everyone,

I wanted to get your thoughts on taking flight lessons once per week. I will go as often as i can however with my schedule its hard to go more than once per week. Some weeks i will have 2 lessons booked. Have any of you had success training at that rate?

Thanks,
Joe
 
I have instructed students that flew at a similar pace. Takes over a year to get a private certificate. More frequency is better but have to do what you can do.
 
Probably most of us did it that way. Often your instructor will have a day job, too. So she’s only available weekends anyway.

a good middle ground would be to push hard, maybe take a week off work, to solo. Solo is all about muscle memory, eye-hand coordination, sight picture, standardized procedure, repeatable performance, & self-confidence.

after that, once a week flying with study, chair flying, & review in between would work well. Also, since you’re at the airport anyway, consider two sessions with an hour’s rest in between. Maybe one dual session, a break, followed by a solo session. The more self-confidence you have in your ability to handle the basics of aviation, the faster you’ll progress.
 
Thanks everyone, i do like that idea of taking a week off to focus heavily on soloing. I may do that later in the spring after i build up enough air time to make sure i am ready for that.
 
I started off about that slow (1x a week, or even less) but eventually got to a place where I could take more frequent lessons, sometimes 3 or 4 times a week. My progress really accelerated once I was able to fly more often since I spent less time redoing the previous lesson's tasks. Also the longer you take, the more likely it is that you'll have to change flight instructors since many instructors don't stay in the business very often if they are just building time for an airline job. So if you need to change instructors, that can temporarily interrupt your progress a bit too.
 
You'll have to schedule some amount more than once a week of your goal is to fly once a week.

When I started training, I knew--as is often repeated here--the secret to finishing in fewer flight hours is to fly as frequently as possible. Faster cash burn up front, but less total spent to get the ticket. I figured my schedule would allow me to fly twice a week, so that was my target.

I lost a few days to aircraft or instructor availability, more days due to my availability due to work or travel, and a LOT of days due to unsuitable weather.
When I passed my check ride, 14 months after starting training, I looked back through my logbook and saw I'd averaged a bit under one lesson a week over that period, far below my target.
 
I tried to schedule two lessons a week, one on Saturday, one on Sunday, as I was working 9 to 5, and then 7 to 4, while I was taking lessons, and the airport was an hour and a half one way drive. I finished in about 15 months and had 70 hours at my checkride. I should look at my logbook, but I doubt I averaged one flight a week. Some weeks, I was able to get in two or three flights and sometimes, there were three or four week stretches between good weather days. I also had a three month break in there due to covid, and switched airports, instructors, and went high wing to low wing. It's definitely possible to get your certificate that way, but you need to be going over what you did at your last lesson over and over during the week as much as possible, and keep your head squarely in "aviation" airspace as often as possible.

ETA: I went back and did the numbers. The average time between lessons for me was 1.5 weeks. However, there were blocks of time where I was flying three times a week - twice on weekends and once during the week. Then I'd have to take a weather break and go a week or three without any lessons or flights at all. Rinse and repeat. The amount of scheduled flights that got scrubbed during my training, almost entirely due to weather (one flight due to a possible mx issue, one flight due to illness, and one flight due to having to be a bridesmaid in my sister's wedding), was amazing. I scheduled two to three lessons every week, so somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of my scheduled flights were canceled. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about how often to schedule.
 
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Joe Williamson said:
Hey Everyone,

I wanted to get your thoughts on taking flight lessons once per week. I will go as often as i can however with my schedule its hard to go more than once per week. Some weeks i will have 2 lessons booked. Have any of you had success training at that rate?

Thanks,
Joe
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Sounds like a plan if you never have to cancel due to personal conflicts and live where the wind doesn’t blow, it never rains, the airplanes are never down for maintenance and the instructors never take a time off.
 
Joe Williamson said:
Hey Everyone,

I wanted to get your thoughts on taking flight lessons once per week. I will go as often as i can however with my schedule its hard to go more than once per week. Some weeks i will have 2 lessons booked. Have any of you had success training at that rate?

Thanks,
Joe
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I don't think you will ever get it done with only once a week. Like said above there is a million other reasons you won't be able to fly once a week. IMO you need to schedule 3X a week and plan on having one of those dates each week cancelled.

At once a week, 3X a month is not near enough. It will cost you more in the long run and take forever to get it done.

Flight training is not for the faint at heart. It's a hard and costly commitment. Good luck!
 
To add on to some previous comments, how flexible is your schedule? If, for example, by saying you can only fly once a week if that means you can ONLY fly on Sunday afternoons, for example, then you're likely never going to get it done. Throw in bad weather and a maintenance event and pretty soon you're only flying once or twice a month.

If, however, you can say "the weather looks bad on Sunday, so I'll fly Saturday instead", or "the plane's going to be down for maintenance next week, so I'll fly twice this week instead", then it's possible, it's just going to take a while (a year is a reasonable estimate at that rate).
 
Great advice, ill book 7 lessons a month knowing that 1-2 will get cancelled. My schedule is somewhat flexible. I took a week off in May to focus on flying with the hope that i will be good enough to solo around that time.
 
Joe Williamson said:
Great advice, ill book 7 lessons a month knowing that 1-2 will get cancelled. My schedule is somewhat flexible. I took a week off in May to focus on flying with the hope that i will be good enough to solo around that time.
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You have low expectations of yourself Joe. Learning to fly requires focus and confidence that you will overcome the obstacles that present themselves. If you want to fly, make time for it, it will cost you less time in the end to get trained.
 
If possible, I would book more than seven lessons a month. I would aim more for the 10-12 mark at least. I understand not being able to have or make time between work and family obligations, but if your schedule is flexible, I would try my hardest to be going to the airport at least twice a week, even if it is just Saturday and Sunday.
 
As others have said, if you only schedule once a week, you can count on weather, schedules and maintenance issues fouling up your plans. But on the other hand, a lot of it depends on you. I was teaching a very successful businessman who we would fly one day after work and one day on the weekend. It was like flying with two different people. During the week he would get in the airplane so many other things on his mind that I finally told him we were wasting our time and then only flew on the weekends from then on.
 
You'll quickly get a feel for how often mechanical issues, scheduling issues, weather issues and all come up where you are. And then hopefully can figure out a good amount of scheduling to do.
 
I do once a week; picking up additional mid-week when available. Yes, weather/holidays or other time off needed by the instructor is a factor.

It's a grind, but there is a bright side. You'll tend to need more hours doing it this way, and this requires more flights. With more flights, you'll possibly be exposed to more atypical situations that would not statistically occur with fewer flights - and all these occur with a CFI nearby. These may be good experiences to have in your pocket should you ever have to face them on your own.
 
PaulS said:
You have low expectations of yourself Joe. Learning to fly requires focus and confidence that you will overcome the obstacles that present themselves. If you want to fly, make time for it, it will cost you less time in the end to get trained.
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Honestly I’m not sure how much time it takes someone to be able to solo for the first time. I was being conservative with my estimate. I am a quick learner and hope to be able to solo before then. How many hours does it take an average person before they can solo?
 
Learning to fly at once a week flying is slower than flying more often, but it's possible, and it's way better than not flying at all. Lots of people start the process and stop...but it's mostly not because they can't, it's because they stop making the effort, for whatever reason. Don't worry about hours to solo. Nobody cares much about that, and some students and instructors want more time or expect a higher level of experience than others.
 
I was making somewhat poor progress with a 1/week plan. When I bumped it up to 2/week it went a lot smoother. After my PPL, I found I could schedule two lessons in a day (with a lunch break in between, totaling 4 lessons per weekend minus cancellation) for my instruments rating and commercial, but it would have been too mentally exhausting when I was first learning to fly. Some people might be able to pull that off.
 
Don't forget that it isn't a race. It will take as long as it takes. 4 months, 12 months, 18 months, 48 hours TT, 72 hours TT, it doesn't matter. At the end of the training you'll pass the checkride and have your certificate.
 
Rgbeard said:
I took eight hours
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I soloed at 5.1 hrs. Better still I only had .8 hrs the C-172 I soloed in. The prior 4.3 hrs were in a C-150.

But then I was 20 something kid, flying at an airport that maybe had 20 planes based at it and seeing one in the pattern while I was flying was rare. I had also been reading and dreaming about flying for 15years and building and flying Model R/C Airplanes for 10 years prior to starting flying lessons.

I have a rule of thumb that I won’t solo anyone under 10 hours where I teach, just because of traffic and learning how to do radio work and flying traffic patterns with other aircraft. Most of my students solo between 15-20 hours, I have had some not solo till nearly 40 hours. The interesting part is time to solo makes almost no difference in the time or cost to get their certificate as almost all my students take their checkride between 60 and 70 hrs.

Looking at my log book I see even then I took my checkride at 60hrs.

To the OP, I am a part CFI with a day job so I pretty much instruct on weekends and mornings or evenings during the week. As a result most of my students only fly 1-3 times per week. Most get their ratings in 6-14 months. I agree that twice a week is a good minimum to shoot for, with some weeks of intense training, minimum 3 times a week, especially leading up to solo.
Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
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And like clockwork my lesson was cancelled today due to weather lol yea im going to book a lot more lessons to help with this. Thanks again everyone
 
Joe Williamson said:
Hey Everyone,

I wanted to get your thoughts on taking flight lessons once per week. I will go as often as i can however with my schedule its hard to go more than once per week. Some weeks i will have 2 lessons booked. Have any of you had success training at that rate?

Thanks,
Joe
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Two things.

First, I've only seen one lesson per week work well for young people. Like under 20.

Second, once a week has to actually be once per week. Missing a week will set you back like a month. If you miss a week too many times you will never make any progress.
 
Hey, newbie here. Just got my Private under the cadence you’re asking about. Flew on average once a week, so when the weather cooperated I could get at least 4 lessons in per month. Some winter months I could only get one flight a month.

My CFI had a day job, but accommodated on certain weekdays. That helped with some night flight requirements.

All in all, was able to complete this in a year and 4 months, 54 hours of flying.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
Thanks Feh! Im going to work on getting 5-6 lessons per month. My goal is to have my certificate by this fall.
 
Just had my second lesson and i just cannot get comfortable with the bumps while flying. Its so frustrating. Im not afraid its just the sudden bumps that get me. Im assuming that it just takes time to get comfortable with them during the lesson.
 
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Joe Williamson said:
Just has my second lesson and i just cannot get comfortable with the bumps while flying. Its so frustrating. Im not afraid its just the sudden bumps that get me. Im assuming that it just takes time to get comfortable with them during the lesson.
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Yes, most people become accustom to the bumps. I don't enjoy turbulence, but have more tolerance for the bumps than I had in the beginning... even under the hood.

It's easy to say, but don't let it throw you. There is a lot of new stuff you are experiencing... it'll become easier over time.
 
If I may suggest, can you give some detail on what's going through your mind? Do you think the concern is that a sudden change is going to put you at a bad angle of attack? Or is it a motion sickness type feeling? For me, it was the AoA thing.

When I experienced this, it consumed some nerves for sure. Instructor basically said, at the end of the day you just have to "roll with it" and do your best to not let those things "boss your around" in that - it's your job to maintain desired heading, altitude.

Now, it's more of an annoyance than anything else. As mentioned, I get the one-day-a-week training, and it seems like on the days where I'm busy and can't fly - I think "wow - today would be great for flying". Then, on the days where I'm scheduled to fly, the weather seems to be less than ideal! But then again, you won't get to have optimal weather every time you fly.

For clarification for others, I think you mentioned the "bumpiness" initially in a different thread ...
 
I think it is messing with my nerves. I feel like its hard to practice maneuvers when its that bumpy. Im going to push through and hope that i start to get used to it.
 
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Manuevers are harder to practice when the air isn't smooth, but it is possible, and you actually get used to them. By the time I took my checkride, I just took it for granted that manuevers meant fighting bumps. You get used to it. Not at your second lesson, but once you start controlling the plane mostly by thinking of what you want it to do instead of how to make the plane do what you want it to do. I started correcting for thermals and turbulence without even thinking at that point. However, I always found that I was a lot more tired after an hour or two "up in the bumps" vs. a lesson with glassy-smooth air!
 
Another bit of advice, don't cancel on your instructor, you will get low on his priority list if you cancel more than once or twice.
 
I don't like bumps either, but like many things in flying, you have to deal with it. Better to get used to it while training, than to fly only smooth days and worry about bumps, winds, crosswinds and whatever after you are certified.
 
PaulS said:
Another bit of advice, don't cancel on your instructor, you will get low on his priority list if you cancel more than once or twice.
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hmmm, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with an instructor that has that policy.

edit: I probably should note my assumption that cancelations are for legit reasons and are coordinated with the instructor.
 
Bob Noel said:
hmmm, I'm not sure I'd want to deal with an instructor that has that policy.
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You probably wouldn't realize it, not saying the op is doing this, but it is a douche bag move to schedule for 3 lessons a week when you only plan on using 1 and canceling the other two.
 
PaulS said:
You probably wouldn't realize it, not saying the op is doing this, but it is a douche bag move to schedule for 3 lessons a week when you only plan on using 1 and canceling the other two.
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I agree with that. Not saying it was the OP's intent, but it does bear mentioning. If you book 2 flights a week in case of weather but the weather stays good, then you need to be prepared to fly both times (financially, etc.). If you can only afford to fly once a week, then you may need to save up for a little while before starting, to cover times like this. If you're routinely booking twice a week, flying the first one then canceling the second, yeah as a CFI I'd get pretty tired of that pretty quickly.
 
dmspilot said:
First, I've only seen one lesson per week work well for young people. Like under 20
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I've seen it work for older people as well. Actually, that's where my handle came from. Yes, I was a 'midlifeflyer" myself, starting at age 38. But I didn't adopt the handle - and the trademark "Midlife Flight" - until I started teaching. I saw myself as the instructor for people in busy careers and lousy schedules (like mine) who could only fly once, maybe twice, per week.

The young (and aviation career-oriented) instructors would get frustrated by the slower pace and the resulting two steps back for one step forward. I felt I understood it.
(But yes, I always recommended they take more lessons if they could.)
 
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