Measuring up

Every flight instructor is accustomed to answering the question, "How long will it take me to learn to fly?" The answer isn't fixed, because learning is not a process in which a crank turns and a piece of information is inserted into your brain.

Learning is a saw-toothed, three-steps-forward, two-steps-back experience. Can you hold up a yardstick and say, "Now you're at 13.2 flight hours, so you should be able to...." No. Learning to fly has too many intangible factors. And there's the learning environment: We're working in three dimensions.

No one knows exactly, but if the process is analyzed across enough students, a general set of guidelines emerges.

Part of the difficulty in saying where your skills should be at any point is that students vary. You first noticed this in about second grade. And learning is driven by a number of factors, some internal to the student and some external.

Match the teaching and learning methods

Every student learns in a different way. Some are more visually oriented; they need information drawn out on paper, then demonstrated in the airplane. Others can mentally picture what's being said, and demonstrations in the airplane flesh it out. Still others learn from "do it this way" demonstrations. In a classroom environment, an educator's teaching method will be perfect for part of the class, OK for a majority, and totally wrong for an unfortunate few. So, if a kid's learning style is mismatched with the teacher's teaching style, he's going to be in trouble unless he asks a lot of questions. The same thing is true in the cockpit.

An experienced flight instructor constantly strives to determine how a student learns so that he can adjust his approach. If a teaching/learning mismatch goes undetected, flight time can be wasted, and a student naturally becomes frustrated when he sees he's not making progress the way he perceives that other students are. If there's a mismatch, the instructor sometimes can't see it, but a self-aware student can see it clearly. He may not realize it's a mismatch, but he certainly knows when he doesn't understand something. If he asks questions often enough, the instructor learns that the method he's using isn't working, and will change. A student's questions are an instructor's best friend: They are an accurate barometer of the teaching/learning match.

Teaching style holds your attention

We've all dozed through lectures on subjects that should have kept our attention but didn't. The teacher couldn't make an interesting subject interesting because of his teaching style (or lack thereof). We're been fascinated by subjects that ordinarily wouldn't interest us only because the instructor presented them in such a dynamic way.

Instructors have a difficult time changing their style, mostly because it just happens as part of their personality. Regardless, the way in which they do--or don't--draw you into the subject has a huge effect on your progress and, if it's done right, will propel you farther down the road.

Students attuned to learning

Some people are hardwired to learn: They sit down in a classroom or climb into a cockpit and their complete attention is focused on the process of learning. Others can't shut off portions of their brains, and mental distractions may interfere. Try as they may, they can't totally home in, and they seldom realize what is happening. The net result is that they will learn a little more slowly than the next guy, which puts them toward the bottom of the class--and, often, frustrated.

Right/left brain match

Some folks are more mechanically oriented than others. They will find themselves sliding right into the airplane groove without a moment's hesitation. They are just reapplying things they already know. If a right-brained, artistic type who doesn't know you're supposed to hang on to the fat end of a screwdriver climbs on board, the systems management and the machinery factors will take him a while to grasp. Still, when it comes to flying the airplane, he'll do as well as or better than the guy who knows machinery.

Adaptive mental attitude

The ability to change gears mentally and emotionally can't be overemphasized in learning to fly. To a student, flying is new on about a dozen physical, mental, and emotional levels, and the ability to quickly adapt in these areas greatly aids the learning process. Until fears and other hidden demons are exorcised, learning is handicapped and progress slowed.

Life situation, lesson frequency

Some students can dedicate their lives to learning to fly, and they are at the airport three or four times a week. They can't help but learn faster than a person who feels lucky to fly once every three weeks. The more often a person flies, the higher the retention.

So far we've discussed why people learn at different rates, but we haven't given you anything to measure yourself against. As humans we have a tendency to want to measure ourselves against others, which works on a general level, but not on a specific level. It should be mentioned that the subject of how much time is really required to learn to fly is often debated. Suffice it to say that, while the laws of physics haven't changed, something is certainly happening that has made the original time requirements for a private certificate (40 hours in a Part 61 flight school, or 35 at a school certified under FAR 141) look like a joke. With the national average nearly twice those numbers and airplanes easier to fly, a lot of factors that extend the time it takes to learn to fly have come into play that are outside the realm of this discussion.

Incidentally, if you were expecting us to say, "You should have soloed at 12.2 hours," it isn't going to happen--besides the student/teacher factors we discussed earlier, the training environment outside of your airplane's cockpit also makes a difference. Briefly, and we recognize that these are generalities, those factors include:

The larger the airport, the longer it will take. Big airports cost time. Taxiing takes forever on long runways and control towers seldom speed things up. Also, big airports serve big airplanes, which can wreaks havoc on a training schedule.

Bad weather cancels flights. Phoenix flight instructors seldom have to cancel flights because of weather, while instructors in Seattle could lose half of their scheduled flights--at least during the rainy season. Minneapolis instructors may fly a regular schedule only for part of the year. So, if you're at a large airport in a northern state, expect to take longer to learn.

A long drive to the airport reduces opportunities. If you have to drive an hour to fly an hour, you're going to fly less often. The learning-to-fly curriculum for a private pilot certificate is arranged in four basic blocks of time during which you concentrate on developing certain skills and fulfilling certain experience requirements. The curriculum sections are presolo; post-solo, pre-cross-country; the cross-country phase; and checkride preparation.

Presolo

The first 15 hours of your flying career are the most important. This is where you are introduced to the basics that form the foundation for every other thing you'll do in aviation. This includes basic aircraft handling (turns, glides, climbs, coordination, attitude control, and the rest) as well as figuring out how to get the airplane on and off the ground. However, it's a mistake to think that takeoffs and landings are the most important factors. Without the basics of aircraft handling, which should continue to be emphasized throughout your learning program, it's impossible to do the rest right:

• turns, climbs, glides.
• stalls.
• takeoffs, landings (normal and limited crosswinds).
• ground reference maneuvers (rectangular patterns, turns around a point, S-turns across a road).
• pattern entry and exits.
• radio procedures.

Post-solo, pre-cross-country

After your first solo flights and before you leave the nest on your first cross-countries, you'll be gaining new skills and working to develop proficiency in those you learned before. This will be a repeated pattern in which you continually practice old skills by yourself, then fly with your instructor--who will check on your progress, expand on old skills, and teach you new ones. During this period, you'll learn the following (some are optional and might be postponed until after your cross-countries):

• specialized landings (soft field, short field).
• unfamiliar airport familiarization by landing at local airports.
• minimal training in flight solely by reference to instruments.

Cross-country phase

Not all of the cross-country phase is spent going cross-country, because you first have to learn to apply the classroom concepts of cross-country skills (navigation, chart reading, and the like) while flying the airplane. You'll do this in the local area before taking off on a series of short dual cross-countries. Only then will you launch on your own short and long cross-countries.

Checkride prep

After your cross-countries are completed, the next hurdle is the checkride for the private pilot practical test. Between the two you'll be catching up on some of the requirements and honing your skills in preparation for the checkride. While all of this is going on, forget about the checkride. That's not important.

What is important is that everything you have learned in the past be forged into a solid basis of skills that will stay with you for the rest of your life. This will help to make you a safe pilot who enjoys what he's doing. Passing the checkride is just a happy byproduct of that process.

Incidentally, the check pilot isn't out to fail you. He's there to double-check that you know what you need to know in order to be a safe pilot. If you set the same goal before the checkride, the ride itself becomes anticlimatic.

The bottom line of learning to fly isn't how well you're doing compared to the next guy. The measuring stick should be based on the standards that are required to be a safe pilot and how well you are doing at realizing your potential. The FAA Practical Test Standards that your CFI will use in prepping you for your checkride establish the bare minimums. They are not what you should strive to meet. They are what you need to pass, not what you need to be a good pilot. A good pilot flies far, far better than the PTS requires and will always be trying to improve.

So, how are you doing on the learning yardstick? Who cares? The only thing that is important is that you are progressing toward becoming the kind of pilot you know you should be. Nothing else matters.

Budd Davisson is an aviation writer/photographer and magazine editor who has written approximately 2,200 articles and has flown more than 300 different types of aircraft. A CFI since 1967, he teaches about 30 hours a month in his Pitts S-2A Special. Visit his Web site.