Commercial add-on, different options!

[flyby_heli]

So, I know this has been brought up in the past quite a few times, and I promised some of you to keep you posted on my students' progression.

I had two students that were already rated commercial fixed wing pilots. Both passed their commercial helicopter rating this week, but they chose different ways to get there.

 

Student one: ATP fixed wing, CFI and ground instructor rating fixed wing, thousands of hours, been test pilot for aerobatic airplanes.

He chose to skip the private check ride and go straight for commercial. He soloed after 6.5 hours of dual. He ended up with 56.8 hours after his commercial checkride. 35 of them was solo.

 

Student two: Commercial fixed wing, never flown commercially though, flew gyros a couple years back and flies ultralights every now and then. Did the private first and passed that. Then got all the commercial requirements out of the way and started prepping for commercial ride. He soloed after 9.3 hours of dual. He ended up with 60.2 hours after the checkride, of which 22 was solo.

 

So all in all they both spent pretty much the same amount of time and money to get to their ratings although they did it different ways. the 35 hour solo(PIC) requirement, if you go straight for commercial, is the killer part if you ask me. Most people would benefit from more dual instruction and less solo time, but in the end we as instructors can only advice people on what to do. It is the customers money and if they want to do it their own way, that's their right, right?

 

So there you have it, there is in fact more than one way to get to Rome!

[Superman]

That’s interesting. So really the only extra cost was the second check ride, and a few more hours of dual, which like you said was probably a good thing to have anyway.

 

Thanks for the update.

 

Fly Safe

Clark

[delorean]

I've had couple people take that route.....straight to the commercial with the 35 solo hrs. But, for an extra $100 for a checkride, they could have spent that extra 25 hours of PIC time taking friends and family for rides or training for the CFI or Instrument add-ons.

 

It's up to them if they want to piss away 25 hrs of flight time goofing around by themselves, but I always tried to talk them out of it. Seemed like a big waste to me--especially when they hit 35 hrs of PIC, then we had to go back and prep for the commecial ride (in which they were't loggin PIC anymore).

[flyby_heli]

But, for an extra $100 for a checkride

I agree on spending more time doing dual....but a checkride these days is about $500 extra!

At the same time dual instruction is more expensive, so it'll cost extra there too. I think it was roughly a $2000 difference between the students when everything was said and done.

[Gerhardt]

I'm not sure about taking friends and family up during that 25 hours. Where I rent you need 100 hours helo time before taking passengers, because of insurance requirements. Which is probably not a bad idea.