Dear Rod: I have been training with my current CFI in a Cessna 172 and have 55 hours but haven’t yet soloed. I have spent the last 30 to 40 hours in the same traffic pattern. My landings are pretty much always the same. I do tend to flare a bit low, but have never had any landings that were dangerous.
Whenever I mention the fact that I have an excessive amount of presolo hours and I am running out of money to any of the CFIs, my concerns are immediately dismissed. I’ve been told that counting hours is bad and that everyone learns at their own pace. If I press the issue, the CFIs usually get mad. I reached a point where I had to walk away from the school out of frustration. Just wondering if you think I have made a bad decision and should keep flying with these folks.
Dave
Greetings Dave: Yes, everyone learns at their own pace, but nearly everyone learns at a normal pace, too. If your landings are not dangerous (as you say), then having spent 30 to 40 hours in the pattern and not soloing is a sad story. So here are several possible explanations.
First, you might be the problem. Yes, it’s possible that you might have a specific learning disability when it comes to landing. I honestly don’t know, and can’t know from the written word. Then again, any good instructor should let his or her student know when he suspects a problem with the student’s ability to learn at a normal pace. Since your instructor hasn’t informed you of such a deficit, I can only assume that you learn at least at a normal pace.
This leads to the next possibility, which is that your instructor simply doesn’t know how to teach you to land an airplane. Landing, after all, is nothing more than a simple assembly of the skills that you learned in the practice area. The roundout and flare are the two additional skills that you need to land, but these skills normally can be learned in four to five hours of pattern time under normal training conditions.
Next, the possibility exists that your instructor doesn’t know it’s possible to solo someone with normal landing skills in a simple airplane (and a reasonable training schedule) in under 20 hours of flight time. Believe me, it is!
Your instructor also might not understand the purpose of the solo, which is to provide a student with the initial confidence needed to act as PIC of an airplane. It’s not uncommon for instructors to insist on near-private-pilot proficiency levels before they’ll solo a student (which defeats the purpose of solo flight). This is a very unfortunate and rather recent trend in aviation.
Finally, the ugliest and least likely possibility—but a possibility, nevertheless—is that your instructor is stretching out your training time for his or her personal gain. Sorry, but some people are just bad apples (if they weren’t, then the daily newspaper would be a lot thinner, right?).
I don’t know what your situation is, but I do know this. You did the right thing by leaving that flight school. Any instructor who gets angry with you for asking why you’ve spent close to (I’m guessing) $10,000 and haven’t soloed yet is too immature to be a flight instructor. I recommend that you find a more mature and professional instructor with a track record of having soloed students in under 20 hours. You’ll be much happier and you’ll be a private pilot sooner, too.
Dear Rod: I have a student pilot certificate and am about to finish ground school but haven’t started flying yet. A pilot friend says that I should take the FAA knowledge test before I do any flying. I think that I should take the test after I have done a little flying. Can you give me any guidance?
Patty
Greetings Patty: If you’re ready to take the knowledge test based on your performance on the ground school’s practice tests, then take the test. I’ve taught many ground school students over the years, and quite a few have taken the test without having any flight time and easily passed. Ultimately, it all depends on how you feel about the information you’ve studied and how well you’ve done on the practice tests.
