Couple of things worth noting: the 35 hours Gernan PPL were airborne time, not block time, abd the syllabus wasn’t as bloated as today’s. And the minimum was 40 hours, but a 5 hour reduction was available if you did it in 6 months or less.
what_next wrote:
Yes. And after the PPL in a C152 the flying school will happily sell you five hours differences training in a C172… EASA part FCL must really be the result of a flying school conspiracy!
C152 to C172 only requires familiarization training, which legally, you can do yourself.
In the UK the average is something like 60.
An old (ancient) instructor here, having taught countless PPLs, used to say that the average hours a person needs to learn what’s needed for PPL is equal to the average age. If you are 20, you need 20 hours. If you are 60, you need 60 hours.
Brits are old I guess 
on average …
LeSving wrote:
An old (ancient) instructor here, having taught countless PPLs, used to say that the average hours a person needs to learn what’s needed for PPL is equal to the average age. If you are 20, you need 20 hours. If you are 60, you need 60 hours.Brits are old I guess on average …
I knew it I was a great pilot as newborn =)
There is a formula, which is scarily accurate, for the time to go first solo, based on age.
Due to advancing age, I can’t remember it 
The UK PPL scene is mostly really decrepit. There are notable exceptions but not many. You get all kinds of really bad crap like a lesson getting bounced because a bunch of people walk in for somebody’s birthday pleasure flight trial lesson. And the changeable wx doesn’t help. When I was doing my PPL in 2000/2001 there were eight fixed wing schools at my relatively small place (~70k movements a year then), all eating each others’ lunch, and I’d say 6 of them were useless. Most have gone bust years ago.
It used to think this is exceptional in Europe but the above post "in the “big” French aeroclubs, the average time to get a PPL is about 60h and it takes 1,5 years. First solo comes after about 15hrs. " is very close to the UK. This is really awful and a very poor service to the customers. I bet that, like the UK, they get a significant number of 100hr students. OTOH French wx doesn’t get much better than the UK until you get down to roughly the latitude of La Rochelle… I wonder why this is? Do the students mess around, flying once every 2 weeks? Or are they in their 60s?
I see nothing wrong with a first solo after 15 hours, depending on talent etc. I did it with 9 hours but if a student needs 15, so what? The whole thing took me 35 hours, 8 weeks. Most pilots I know were in the range of 35-40 hours. Some needed 80 though, and for a reason in the cases I personally know.
One friend of mine did it on purpose. Due to very high work load he had little time to fly and he simply wanted to fly with a CFI longer, and he did not care about the money, only about safety. Today he is an above average pilot who does not fly too much but who is safe.
Alexis wrote:
I see nothing wrong with a first solo after 15 hours, depending on talent etc.
It also very much depends on circumstances. Our students all take at least 15 hours to first solo. Simply because we are based at an international airport where we can’t do landing practice. Every single training sortie is also a navigation exercise because we have to fly to one of the training airfields around us, the nearest of which is 20 minutes away with a C152. The good thing about that setup is that the students are ready for solo cross-country flying shortly after their first solo patterns. And they are fully familiar with airport operations and proper R/T when they get their license.
Peter wrote:
I bet that, like the UK, they get a significant number of 100hr students. OTOH French wx doesn’t get much better than the UK until you get down to roughly the latitude of La Rochelle… I wonder why this is? Do the students mess around, flying once every 2 weeks? Or are they in their 60s?
Well, that’s pretty much it. I knew some 100hrs+ students but they are not many.
The weather is an important factor too : FIs tend to be more and more cautious and Part NCO will increase this move. So more and more lessons get canceled. I did lessons in pretty marginal conditions (as we said : let’s take off to see closely what it looks like :)) it’s OK when you know the area really well.
Most students can only fly on weekends, which often means every other saturday (1 every 2 weeks). Due to personal reasons : flying is a hobby for the husband, the wife can only accept a certain amount of it. Plus house works, seeing friends, family, etc …. This also applies to the FI who is a volunteer : so months go fast during training.
Usually few people flies at lunch time so the most intense activity of any flying club is Saturday 10-12 am, 2-6 pm : that’s 6 hours per week !! Guess what happens if the week is sunny and the saturday gloomy ??
An FI has at most 4 students each saturday, each takes 2 years, so the math is simple : 1 FI makes 2 PPLs per year
Look at the a/c booking site of any club on any weekday and you’ll see I am right. People need to work for a flying living
Student’s in their 60s have more free time and money usually, so training goes smoother and faster even if they need to work more on the theory part.
To me, this is one of the reasons people quit flying after the PPL : they spend so much time/effort/money/wife-tolerance during their training they can’t continue flying after their training : the PPL is the goal, it becomes the end. Once they got their ticket, they realize they need more flying to get confident, take friends on trips… And they drop.
Not so many people drop out during training though, mainly because clubs immediatly tell candidates how much blood and tears they will need. One day a guy came at my former club : the chief pilot told him upfront “it’s 2 years long, 12,000€ and I can’t take new students for the next 6 months” . I was shocked ! Guess why GA is declining !
I think most people think flying is an expensive and intellectual kind of yachting : you come, pay a few thousand €, study 1 or 2 weeks, and you are free to take your friends around the world. Flying is more difficult to plan and share with friends and family in my experience (than a road trip of a boat trip or an Easyjet weekend).
And then you read an article about a US entrepreneur who in 3 years goes from zero to buying his first jet, flying his team on weekdays and his family on weekends. He passed all his ratings training in the morning between 7 and 9 am. Life is not fair
Alexis wrote:
I see nothing wrong with a first solo after 15 hours, depending on talent etc. I did it with 9 hours but if a student needs 15, so what?
I agree with you Alexis, I meant : no student does his first solo before 12 hrs, most do 15 hrs
I had done dozens of hours with my dad (PPL) in the RHS and I soloed after 14 hrs.
what_next wrote:
Every single training sortie is also a navigation exercise because we have to fly to one of the training airfields around us, the nearest of which is 20 minutes away with a C152.
Don’t take it personaly, but I wouldn’t like to learn in your school !
Jujupilote wrote:
Don’t take it personaly, but I wouldn’t like to learn in your school !
Don’t worry Anyway, it is not my flying school, I’m only instructing there in my free time. And I myself trained from the same base and really liked the daily mix of cross-country and pattern training. Fifteen hours to first solo may sound a lot, but then 16 hours to never fly with an instructor again is also something nice!
I also used to work for a flight school based at an airport where doing circuits would have been (slightly) expensive, hence we usually even flew 25-30 minutes to the nearest suitable places for circuit training. It was dreadful, and I was sorry for my students, since the time flying there was essentially “wasted”, but that’s how it was. Sure, one does learn “something” on these little x-countries, but not a lot, especially not at the very beginning. Also, these 25-30 minutes “drained” most of the students mentally, enough to make them struggle on the subsequent 6 or 7 circuits we did at those airfields away from base. Then, at the end, another one of those useless cross-countries to get back home, during which the student was then totally drained and didn’t pick up anything really. A dreadful waste if money and time. Most students needed north of 20 hours to go solo and more like 50-60 hours till the flight test (another factor was that at this flight school, the instructor-student pair changed every time, so that the student didn’t really make progress due to all the confusion). It astounds me the WN states that students at EDDS usually manage to do their
PPL within the minimum hours.
It is so valuable to train at an airport wher you can just go out and do a few circuits and little more, allowing the student to do those circuits when he is still totally "fresh. It also allows you to do something useful when the weather is foul, and not cancel the lesson compeletly. After all, landing is the biggest challenge for beginning students and is what is the most important to master in the first 15 hours.
So, if you are an aspiring PPL, please do train at an airport where circuits are possible / reasonable in terms of cost.
