Take a passenger for the first flight post-checkride?

Take a pax on the first post-checkride flight?

  • Yes

    Votes: 57 82.6%

  • No

    Votes: 12 17.4%
  • Total voters
    69
My first passenger was my twin brother who I taken up about 2 months after passing my sport pilot checkride. He is an anxious person but totally gave me moral support through my flight training process. He really enjoyed the 45 minute flight around the local area.

Since then I taken up 2 other passengers, one of them who is a CPL going for his CFI ride. This person helped me with the radios and taking pics/videos and seem we were a good crew though I am still PIC. I also have a potential 3rd passenger who is interested in going up with me.

In general I would not take a passenger to a place where I have never been to myself before. I also gave myself an arbitrary limitation of 50 solo PIC hours after the checkride before taking passengers but I later revised it to when I feel comfortable myself taking passengers up which was sooner than I expected.
 
DJTorrente said:
Isn't conventional wisdom that you're never farther above the PTS minimum proficiency than you are the day you pass your practical?

If not then, when?
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I was about to say, "You're never better prepared and more current than right after your checkride."
 
AV8R_87 said:
A friend recently passed his private checkride. His plan is to take a family member (no flying experience) with him for his first post-checkride flight.

Would you do that? I recommended against that, advising him to fly a few hours by himself to validate his solo ADM and planning skills. No more CFI looking over his shoulder now.
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Before he got signed off, the CFI confirmed he's good to fly solo. The DPE confirmed he's good to fly with passengers. At that point he's already got at least 10 hours solo. No issue.
 
DJTorrente said:
Isn't conventional wisdom that you're never farther above the PTS minimum proficiency than you are the day you pass your practical?

If not then, when?
Click to expand...
Well, I hope I was above the private minimum proficiency when I passed by commercial checkrides. And even higher above them when I passed my CFI ride. I know that's a cliche, but skills should be improving, not withering.
 
Flew with my son right after PPL. Wife not that excited to fly and only in local area. My son and I flew a ton of trips before he went to college (7 years worth) and have had many great memories. On long trips, "mom" flies southwest and would meet us at the destination. Even the dog got a few trips in ;)o_O:goofy:
 
I had flown with my dad as a student, he was PIC.

First flight post checkride I took my mom up who had never flown with my dad in 25+ years.
 
This was 40 years ago, but I passed the private checkride and called a friend to meet me at the airport to fly that day.
Jon
 
Lindberg said:
Before he got signed off, the CFI confirmed he's good to fly solo. The DPE confirmed he's good to fly with passengers.
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We've had a few examples over the years of this not always being the case.

Flying solo, or with a CFI or a DPE is different (even when they're actively trying to mess with you) than adding the distraction and light pressure of giving a family member a ride.

My first pax happened after 6 hours. It was enough to convince myself that I was consistent and disciplined enough to deal with the distraction a pax might introduce.
 
Lindberg said:
Examples of CFIs and DPEs not doing their jobs? I'm sure that happens.
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Not blaming the CFI or DPE. Just a fresh pilot that let his guard down (for whatever reason) right after passing his checkride.
 
Steamflyer said:
Today I won't take someone up unless they specially as several times. I don't like pilots who impress friends and families into going with them - lots of fear out there, and a new pilot should really be flying around solo for a while IMHO.
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You'd probably enjoy this story about the time I took up a friend who was afraid of flying.
 
Maybe we should ask the same question about taking a passenger in a car. After passing the driving test, how many trips/hours in a car before taking a passenger?
 
As soon as the DPE was through with me, I took my father up for a ride. He had a private cert but wasn't current at the time. Shortly after that, he regained his currency and bought a 172, which we both flew for a number of years.
 
DJTorrente said:
Isn't conventional wisdom that you're never farther above the PTS minimum proficiency than you are the day you pass your practical?

If not then, when?
Click to expand...
Hopefully not. A pilot should become more precise and more consistent with experience.
 
Did it. Also took a passenger on my first IMC flight post checkride.
 
Took my daughter up first post checkride. Took my wife to St Simons the following week. For that flight we went up evening before in smooth air to take off, fly by our house and land to make sure she was good with it.
 
ateamer said:
Hopefully not. A pilot should become more precise and more consistent with experience.
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They should, but any CFI will tell that the number of people who aren't is staggering. There are many, many pilots who show up for a flight review unable to even maintain altitude within 100 feet in level flight without an autopilot.

Years ago I had an instrument student who had about 1000 hours of VFR flying. I still don't know how he ever got anywhere, he couldn't hold a heading or an altitude at all. He must have just wandered around the sky until he eventually ended up where he wanted to go.
 
I did, the next day. That was in 1984, though. I doubt I even thought anything about it.
 
I took my wife up for a short sightseeing flight the day after my check ride, with 41.8 hours in the book. It was out of the small non-towered airport I learned at, and we left our 6 week old first child in the care of the FBO owner's wife/receptionist while we flew. I wouldn't have done a cross country, but didn't think anything of it for a local sightseeing flight, in good weather, at a field I was very familiar with.
 
Oddly enough, I’ve never flown a passenger post-checkride. My wife will never fly in a small plane, and my kids are too small. I don’t have any pilot friends at the airport, and the rest of my family lives on the other side of the country. Maybe in a few years…
 
T'was many decades ago, took my wife to be straight after check ride for a short scenic flight to show her where our future children's inheritance has been (and will be...) spent.
 
I thought the whole point of getting the cert was to fly a passenger.
 
AV8R_87 said:
I see it more as a you don't need to have a CFI looking over your shoulder before each flight.
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That's what your solo endorsement was for. ;)

OK, yeah, they still are a little over your shoulder but not when you're in the air.
 
My wife went along for my first flight post-PPL checkride. Nice little sightseeing flight along the Texas coast. I don’t see the issue.
 
I was a driving instructor- always suggested to my students to take a few 30-45 minute drives by themselves before taking passengers. As a CFI, I suggest the same process - get some alone time in the plane with that PPC under your belt. There will be a certain amount of pressure with that first passenger. My $.02
 
Eric Brunelle said:
I was a driving instructor- always suggested to my students to take a few 30-45 minute drives by themselves before taking passengers. As a CFI, I suggest the same process - get some alone time in the plane with that PPC under your belt. There will be a certain amount of pressure with that first passenger. My $.02
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The situations are a bit different. Nobody solos in a car with a learner's permit, prior to getting their license. A pilot, OTOH, is required to make solo flights while still a student pilot.
 
Half Fast said:
The situations are a bit different. Nobody solos in a car with a learner's permit, prior to getting their license. A pilot, OTOH, is required to make solo flights while still a student pilot.
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Not to mention maturity levels. Your average new pilot cert is not 16.
 
Salty said:
Not to mention maturity levels. Your average new pilot cert is not 16.
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Obviously not 16, since that's not possible for powered aircraft, and the average (arithmetic mean) would be higher anyway (those wild and crazy septuagenarian students throwing off the numbers), but I wouldn't be surprised if the "mode" of the age of new private pilots wasn't something like 19. Lots of college flight schools pumping out young pilots in recent years. Heck the median value of the ages might be down there too.

And that's all I remember about mean, median and mode from math class.
 
A cousin volunteered to go up with me the day after my checkride. I always appreciated the vote of confidence.

When I got my instrument rating, I had a bad case of checkride nerves, which led to barely squeaking through. I flew solo the next day and flew an ILS to a missed approach in below-minimums weather to regain my confidence, because I knew I could could do it when the checkride nerves were no longer present. It worked.
 
I took my wife up the same day I passed, a short flight over our house and back to the airport without incident.

When a pilot finally passes their checkride after all that work they're naturally going to want to share it with someone. I could see cautioning a new pilot to not immediately try to fly across the country or into Airventure or some other challenging thing but a flight around the pattern or a short hop somewhere to lunch should be fine assuming weather is good and there's nothing particularly challenging about the flight.
 
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