Flight Training Survey Discussion

[rcaligan]

Hi everyone,

A few years ago, I asked members of this board to complete a survey relating to their primary training. I was measuring the relationship between the time needed to solo and future success in getting the private pilot certificate. I'm happy to say that the study is complete and has been published in the current edition of the International Journal of Aviation Psychology. If you'd like to read the abstract and get a brief summary of the results, you can find it here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508414.2012.635124

Again, I want to thank all of the survey participants. If you would like to ask me questions about the study or discuss the results, post your questions or comments here.

Roy

 

[dmac5356]

I read the abstract, but was unable to access the full text without having a login.

A possible faulty premise of the study is that solo should be an early step in the process of learning to fly. As I revisit the entire Private Pilot curriculum I am intentionally pushing solo to later in the program because:

- Early solo students tend to scare themselves, and quit
- Early solos can become airplane rides, which wastes student time and money
- Early solos are potentially more dangerous
- Some students feel they have accomplished their goal at solo, look ahead at the cost to finish, and quit
- Early solos are scary for the instructor

By moving other items ahead of solo (night, dual XC, etc) the student has many more landings in, under various conditions, at multiple airports. The additional experience builds confidence, and solo becomes much less scary for student and instructor. Also, they are closer to completing their rating and are more likely to finish.

The result of this approach is a much higher completion rate, in the same or fewer total flight hours. However, it would skew your study!

Other things I am doing to help students include:

- Video of each lesson that the student takes home to review.
- Using Redbird's X-Wind crosswind simulator for an hour for crosswind landing training. This separates the crosswind portion of landings from the many other actions on landing, greatly easing the learning
- More to come

 

[gismo]

Hi everyone,

A few years ago, I asked members of this board to complete a survey relating to their primary training. I was measuring the relationship between the time needed to solo and future success in getting the private pilot certificate. I'm happy to say that the study is complete and has been published in the current edition of the International Journal of Aviation Psychology. If you'd like to read the abstract and get a brief summary of the results, you can find it here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508414.2012.635124

Again, I want to thank all of the survey participants. If you would like to ask me questions about the study or discuss the results, post your questions or comments here.

Roy

I'm not surprised that there's a "strong correlation" between hours to solo and hours to checkride given that many of the variables that affect time to solo also affect the time needed to prepare for the checkride. Examples would include prevailing weather conditions, student/instructor/airplane availability, student motivation, student's ability to learn, instructor's ability to teach, etc. One issue that might adversely affect this correlation would be the school's/instructor's policy WRT solo qualifications. Some schools encourage soloing as early in the training as can safely be done in order to help motivate the student while others favor waiting until a greater level of proficiency has been demonstrated before allowing the pilot to fly on his/her own.

 

[rcaligan]

Hi Dan. Let me address your issues one by one:

I read the abstract, but was unable to access the full text without having a login.

That's due to copyright restrictions by the publisher. If your local library has access to research databases, you might be able to get a full-text copy there.

A possible faulty premise of the study is that solo should be an early step in the process of learning to fly. As I revisit the entire Private Pilot curriculum I am intentionally pushing solo to later in the program because:

- Early solo students tend to scare themselves, and quit
- Early solos can become airplane rides, which wastes student time and money
- Early solos are potentially more dangerous
- Some students feel they have accomplished their goal at solo, look ahead at the cost to finish, and quit
- Early solos are scary for the instructor

By moving other items ahead of solo (night, dual XC, etc) the student has many more landings in, under various conditions, at multiple airports. The additional experience builds confidence, and solo becomes much less scary for student and instructor. Also, they are closer to completing their rating and are more likely to finish.

I agree that there is an impression in aviation that students should solo early in the syllabus. Several commercially-available syllabi plans lessons so the student solos in 9-14 hours. Some students make take those numbers to heart, and then wonder why they haven't soloed yet. Or, some people may believe that an early solo means that the student was "better" in some respect.

This purpose of the study was to determine if that impression was valid. The study analyzed whether the time someone needed to solo could predict future success in private pilot training. "Future success" was measured in two ways:

1. The amount of time needed to finish the PPL
2. Whether or not the student passed the PPL checkride on the first try

Overall, students who took longer to solo also took longer to finish (I'll address that in more detail in another reply). However, the value had no bearing on whether the student passed the checkride on the first try.

 

[rcaligan]

I'm not surprised that there's a "strong correlation" between hours to solo and hours to checkride given that many of the variables that affect time to solo also affect the time needed to prepare for the checkride. Examples would include prevailing weather conditions, student/instructor/airplane availability, student motivation, student's ability to learn, instructor's ability to teach, etc. One issue that might adversely affect this correlation would be the school's/instructor's policy WRT solo qualifications. Some schools encourage soloing as early in the training as can safely be done in order to help motivate the student while others favor waiting until a greater level of proficiency has been demonstrated before allowing the pilot to fly on his/her own.

You bring up a good point: There are a lot of other factors that affect how early (or late) someone solos. It's more than just ability. And while there was a strong relationship between those two figures, it was only moderately useful as a predictor. In other words, if you estimated how long a student would take to get their PPL based on the amount of time they took to solo, you'd be right about 50% of the time. Those other factors you mentioned can disrupt your prediction (and I'd add "lack of funds" to your list of issues).