Who on POA has been a pilot the longest?

My private checkride was 37 years ago next week.

Nauga,
who has t-shirts older than you
 
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SixPapaCharlie said:
I'm reading the pass your private checkride thread I saw someone posted they have been a pilot for 44 years.

If you are a currently active pilot, how long have you been a certificated pilot?

I'm curious who here has the " highest seniority".

Just crossed 14 years myself.
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32 Years on a $130 Check Ride (Santa Paula Flight Center -SZP)


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I took my 1st lesson and soloed (not on the same day) 51 years ago
Got my Private 49 years ago.
I've been paid to fly for the last 45 years.
 
jayhawk74 said:
I've been paid to fly for the last 45 years.
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Who else remembers the first time they got turned loose with an airplane and a credit card? My mom sent me to Iowa with the Cherokee Six to pick up a combine part that wasn't available locally.

My first paid flying was that same Cherokee Six, after we sold it to a local undertaker...I got to go pick up a body and bring it home for burial.
 
hypoxia said:
49 years. I just read My Life is a Logbook by Ron Klemm who at 50 pilot years had 40,600 hours, most of it in Alaska. Now that's impressive! He was my chief pilot at one time.
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Where can I get that book. I can’t find it.

Kent (44 years)
 
Got my private in 1982 (student pilot certificate in 1981).
Didn't get around to getting my instrument until 2005.
 
*Counting on my fingers, taking shoes off...*

Let's see, 26 years? Not the longest here by far, but still can't believe its been that long. I had a FB memory pop up the other day about 10 years ago getting my CPL and 8 years ago getting my CFI.
 
Got my ticket in '83, but haven't been active in a long time due to multiple things....


geezer said:
A different type of record, today my wife and I celebrated our 64th wedding anniversary. That takes some of the same dedication as keeping a plane flyable, and the pilot skilled.
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Congrats geezer, my parents were just few months short of 50, when mom passed. Wish Paul Harvey was still around and you guys could be part of the champion lovers of the day on his midday program.
 
I love you guys; you make me feel so young! :)

My first solo (Sport Pilot) was March 9, 2017, so only a mere 9.5 years. My baby Beech made her first flight in 1969, but I don't suppose I get any credit for that.

Of course, if you'll let me count flying a control line Cox PT-19 when I was about 10,......
 
First solo in September 1976, so 50 years from that milestone. It took 2 more years to get my PPL in 1978. A shortage of discretionary income caused the delay. If I were starting today, I probably wouldn't make it across the finish line. In 1976 I only paid $15.20/hour wet to rent a Cessna 150, and the instruction was free from a friend's father. When I look at rental rates now, it is clear the cost of flying has climbed much faster than the increase in wages. Applying the overall inflation rate from 1976 to now, a 150 should rent for $89/hour in 2026, but the local rate is $154/hr. I'm just glad I got my wings when I did.
 
Dan Thomas said:
51 years last May.
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I see that some of you are calling first solo, or first flight, as the starting point for being a pilot.

I got my PPL in May 1975, as noted above. But I first flew, first lesson, in May 1973. The first few weeks went well, then I met the girl I would marry. A young man of average income for his age cannot afford both girls and airplanes (as I later would tell my students) and those lessons started getting spaced much farther apart. As we know, Recency is an important Learning Factor, and so much of each lesson involved re-learning the stuff I had forgotten from the previous lesson. At the time, the minimum hours required for a Canadian PPL was 35, but I had 62 by the time I was done.

Got my CPL in 1993, IFR in 1994, Instructor in 1998 or so. (We don't call it a CFI here; that refers to the Chief Flight Instructor in a flight school.) I was working on the seaplane rating when the airplane was damaged by another student in a hard landing. I thought I had enough hours for it, but when I went to Transport to get the rating certified, they told me they had recently upped the requirement from five hours to seven. I had 5.8. The airplane (a 180) never did go back into seaplane service. I could have finished it using a friend's 185, but I would have nothing to fly floats in anyway, and the friend was a long ways away.

Still married to that girl that slowed things down. 48 years now and better every day. Well worth the slowdown in training.
 
First lesson 06/03/2004
First solo 02/22/05
PPL Checkride 04/12/06

I wore out 2 Cox powerd PT19s, and several other control lines kits I built (Lil Satan, Flight Streak Jr, RIngmaster Imperial).

But I started the real thing later in life at age 45.
 
Half Fast said:
Let’s just say I used up all the rubber bands from the junk drawer in the kitchen.
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On my second one, the wing was cracked about 2/3 of the way leading edge to trailing edge. I fixed it with a piece of 1/8" steel rod and wires tied through it. (It broke catching the limb of an oak tree flying it in my front yard.) It still flew, but it took a long time to take off.
 
First dual LOGGED 2/13/74 (but not the first time flying)
First Solo 2/16/74 2.2 hours logged.
Private 1/14/75
Nothing logged between 11/11/79 and 6/20/10
First (and only) time I flew a Cessna 172 5/18/19 - cross that off my bucket list.
 
jsstevens said:
I wore out 2 Cox powerd PT19s, and several other control lines kits I built (Lil Satan, Flight Streak Jr, RIngmaster Imperial).
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Growing up in Houston for the most part, one of my hangouts was EJ's Model Shop. The owners were big into control line and built a roughly 1/4 scale PT-19. Used a chain saw motor for power.
 
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PPL checkride 10/29 /71. Still have a 182RG and Citabria...and a younger wife who does most of the flying any more (and my biennials :-)

Life is good!

Jim
 
Man I am a whipper-snapper. I have never even HEARD of an examiner giving a receipt for a checkride.
 
MauleSkinner said:
I was born about 3 months before you, but my logbook doesn’t start until 1978. I’m thinking I didn’t solo until later in the summer if ‘82…in fact I’m sure of it. I spent June and July in AK with my grandpa that year.

I do know that I took my Private written on June 12, 1981…that was the day my dad crashed his sprayplane, and when my brother, cousin, and I got home from our written test we had to help pick the airplane up out of the field.
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During my rookie season one of the old hands asked me if I knew how to tell when I had made it as an ag pilot. I didn’t have a clue. He told me “one day some ******* will ask if you’ve ever crashed an airplane and you response will be: well I guess it depends on what you consider a crash.”

I thought it was a joke. I knew I was an ag pilot about four years later.
 
Soloed in June, 1966 - passed my checkride December, 1966. So, I suppose, I’m at the 60 year mark.
 
45 years, which includes a 36 year vacation from flying!

I got my private when I was 21 in 1981. I got my instrument in 1984. I took a vacation from flying (family/work/money) in 1985. I restarted flying in 2020.
 
I soloed in 1966. Been flying 60 years.
 
First started taking lessons in '76, was off and on for quite a while, finished up in '96. Stopped when I sold the plane, started again last year.
 
First flight was June of 1968, and I soloed the next month. I never had a private pilot certificate, received commercial, instrument, single and multi-engine when I finished Air Force UPT in 1969. My first civilian checkride was single-engine-sea in 1998, followed by CFI in 2001. Still flying, in fact I just renewed my 2nd class medical on Thursday. I am 81.
 
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