Flying once a week is enough?
 

Hey guys,

I try to start my flight training in LA with my full time job. The hours are really expensive here and I would like to know if it's possible to fly once a week and keep my progression?

I plan to leave my job after my private and be 100 focus on my training. How long it can take me ?

Thank you,
Take care

Flying like a lot of things is a perishable skill.
Once a week your progress will be real slow and you’ll probably end up around 70-80 hrs if not more.
Its not quite as bad as one step forward one step back but it’s close.
If you have anything close to a normal job you work 40hrs a week and have two days off.
Sacrifice some of you social life and fly at least once a day if not twice a day on your days off to keep the progression going.
Safe till you have enough for the first 25hrs flight and an additional 25hrs ground school time.
The rest you can save while you work.
Not to be a grumpy old man but some effort and sacrifices required here.
Bear in mind that the statistics say that 70%(!) does not finish their flight training.
Now get off my lawn.

Your plan of action may take a series of detours… weather, aircraft availability, your schedule may get in the way of your once a week plan. You are better off researching a flight school with a structured curriculum. For best learning, efficiency of time and economy, set aside the funds. An alternative is financing the cost of your training, But the downside is the additional cost attributable to the non tax-deductible interest expense.

Get off my lawn, haha!!!

Ok, seriousness now. I’ll be more blunt than Tired Soul. Don’t waste your time nor money if you can only commit to fly once a week. Here’s why. As stated, 70-80 hours is not only common for a lot of folks, but those that are flying 2-3 times a week. At least in the beginning, lessons will be around 1 hour. So, you’ll get 52 hours in one year (IF nothing gets canceled due to weather, mechanical issues or other scheduling conflict). So you’ve just spent an entire year and most likely won’t even be close to finishing.

I like the idea to have cash in hand for at least, your first 25 hours of both flight and ground time. I will disagree on the need to fly twice each on your days off, but at a minimum you should be flying once each on your days off. To be efficient, my opinion is a student needs to fly 2-3 times a week minimum. To give you a time frame, that’s what I did (while working 40+/week) and took me 5 months.

Best of luck.

Training isn't wasting time, but you may think of your investment in training somewhat like paying off a loan. If you can make the minimum payments, you'll eventually get it done. If you can pay a little more, over and above the minimum payments, you'll get the loan paid off sooner...but you'll also pay less to the bank.

If you train more frequently, you'll get through the training in a shorter period of time, but you'll also save money that you'd spend on additional training. The national average for students completing a private pilot certificate hovers somewhere between 60 and 80 hours, despite the FAA mandated 40 hours (less for specific schools). If you can train more frequently, you may complete it with less hours, which of course means less expense. Much like paying extra on a loan, flying more than the minimum means that over the course of your training, you'll spend less money.

This isn't always possible, for many reasons. You're absolutely right. Flying is expensive, and the hardest part of learning to fly is paying for it. Some find that taking a loan to finish training is more economical, because they spend less, and sometimes get discounts on rental rates when they put down chunk of money up front (this isn't always advised in aviation, as schools that take money up front and then close their doors, aren't unheard of. Sometimes you can buy time in blocks of say, ten hours at a time, at a discount.

When it comes to flight training, shop around. That's true of most things; it pays to shop around. Look at a school's availability, reputation, maintenance, customer satisfaction, instructor experience, and if you're considering moving up the ladder and making it a career, their ability to eventually not only employ you, but keep you busy as you gain hours and experience.

I recommend someone fly at least once a week, but I also recommend that if someone is able, they do more. The less you fly, the more time you spend on the next lesson, trying to re-learn what you've already covered. Flying infrequently is a process of moving a foot forward, then three or four inches back, so that your training dollar on each flight gets spent a little like interest...you spend part of that lesson trying to recoup what you lost in the time since you last flew. It's like interest, when you pay that loan; part of your money goes to paying off the loan, but part of it just to paying the bank, and isn't getting that loan paid down. The more you pay in a given month, the more goes toward the loan, and the more progress you make toward paying down that loan. The more often you can fly, the more you can focus on learning and refining your new skills, and the closer you get to that goal.

Start 8am, flight then ground instruction.
Break for lunch and another flight in the afternoon and you’ll be home by 4pm.
Next day one flight.
Thats 3 flights in two days off with plenty of recreational and study time remaining.
Certain things you can learn by yourself while other things need to be explained to you for you to fully understand it.
I’ve never had a student teach themselves the aerodynamics of a steep turn or a stall.
If at all possible avoid booking lessons prior to or after work.
You’ll be preoccupied with your job at hand at least partially or mentally tired and stressed as a result of it.
Neither creates an ideal environment to learn.
Wake up and flying is the only thing on your mind for that day.

My 2 cents… as an instructor- I never had good lessons with students after they worked all day. They were mentally wiped out.

As others have said, I don’t recommend only flying once a week either but I will say if that’s all you can do hopefully you can be extremely flexible about that 1 day. I had a student who could only fly 1 day at a certain time each week and I think we missed 8 lessons/weeks in a row in the middle of training due to bad weather and equally bad luck. It was like starting all over again.

Once a week will likely be three steps forward, one step back... so it's going to take longer than you think and cost more. You can mitigate that somewhat by staying in the books, chair flying, listening to ATC on the radio, etc.

I would normally recommend flying 2-3 times per week to avoid regression.

I started flying once a week in '79 and it took me 23 years to get my private. Life getting the way, running out of money, etc. So when I got my instrument a year later I did an accelerated course, vowing to never fly that little again to get a certificate of rating.

You didn't fly once a week for 23 years.