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5 Answers

Seeking opinions only – let a student pilot solo at night?

Asked by: 1915 views , ,
Private Pilot, Student Pilot

This is mostly for fellow CFI's, but anyone feel free to chime in - I am only looking for opinions on something that popped into my head while I was reading the regs, but I have no particular emotional attachment to an outcome.  Not sure if i can do a poll here.

The question is - assuming a reasonably competent student, and ideal conditions, do you normally allow your students to solo at night?  

I know that there is an endorsement for it, and I know that it is not required (that I can tell).  It does seem fraught with peril for liability, but on the other hand if they never solo at night under supervision, then as soon as they pass their practical test, they can hop right in and do just that - which also scares me.

Under what conditions, if so and if not, why?

Adam

 

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5 Answers



  1. Russ Roslewski on Aug 02, 2019

    No.

    Why? What’s the advantage?

    There’s no requirement for it, and as far as I can tell no good reason to do it (I am sure there are some unusual cases where it maybe makes sense, but I’ve never had one).

    There are lots of things that are good to learn that we don’t teach in Private Pilot training.

    There’s plenty of time after the checkride to cover things in more depth, or cover additional topics that were not taught in training. I routinely have former students coming back to me to get more comfortable on certain topics – night flying is a big one starting about every November.

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  2. Best Answer


    John D Collins on Aug 02, 2019

    Training and learning is a life long endeavor, as is recurrent training. It does not stop with earning a private pilot rating. It is not practical to learn everything by the time one earns their pilot certificate. I have found that additional solo time beyond that called for in 61.109 is not that productive because students don’t tend to practice things they are unsure of by themselves. When I operated a flight school, one thing that kept training costs time down was carefully managing solo time. Seems like most pilots needed 30 to 35 hours of dual instruction and the difference between pilots who completed their training in 45 hours verses 60 hours could largely be explained by excess solo time and frequency of flights.

    A pilot’s licence is a license to learn. Pilot’s will have plenty of time to build solo time after they are rated.

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  3. ayavner on Aug 02, 2019

    Kinda goes along with my gut feelings on it too, thanks! It is definitely true that there will always be more things to learn at every level.

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  4. CarsonAviation on Aug 03, 2019

    As an owner of a flight school, my policy is to take night solo endorsements on a case by case basis.

    When I was a student pilot in San Diego, my initial training occurred in the late fall and I found some of my solo flights getting back from the practice area later and later in the day to the point where I was afraid that I might come back a few minutes too late and not be legal. I simply asked my instructor for the night endorsement, and we went and did 10 night takeoffs and landings and unusual attitude recoveries under the hood at night and then she wrote it.

    As the owner of a Part 141 school located in a mountainous environment at high altitude, I’ve so far only had one student brave enough to ask for the endorsement, and after receiving it, he taxied out to the runway and immediately turned around and came back in the office and requested one of us to go with him.

    As a matter of policy, we don’t offer the endorsement unless a student asks, and they must be near the end of their training before we consider it. The decision to grant it has to be unanimous between me, the owner, and the student’s instructor.

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  5. Gary S. on Aug 07, 2019

    Night solo in the pattern could be a good confidence builder for the right PP student. Let’s face it, some students have already flown 1,000 hrs with their dad or uncle and show great skill while others are afraid of the airplane. Night solo x-country, niet!

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