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6 Answers

Former Army helicopter pilot wanting to add PPL SEL – requirements?

Asked by: 3544 views FAA Regulations, General Aviation, Helicopter, Private Pilot

I am a former Army helicopter pilot (CH-47D/F) that has since gotten out of the Army and have not flown in about 5 years. I have just over 1100 hours in rotary wing aircraft. I have all my records from my time in and fairly well kept personal logbooks. I did my Commercial Instrument Rotary Wing rating while in flight school under §61.73. I now want to get back into flying and get a single engine land rating. I’ve done a lot of searching and trying to read into the regs but it seems unclear what the requirements are. My understanding is that §61.63(b) applies here but it seems fairly vague about “completes the training”. Is this getting with a CFI and taking whatever time needed to get to a proficiency level for a check ride? Or are there specific amounts of experience as found in §61.109(a) that apply? I’ve tried to provide a robust explanation. Please let me know if other points of clarification are needed.

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6 Answers

  1. Best Answer


    vaflyer on May 08, 2020

    Look at the regulation for the rating that you wish to achieve. Take the Private Pilot airplane §61.109 aeronautical experience. You must complete the flight time for \”airplane\” such as \”(1) 3 hours of cross-country flight training in a single-engine airplane\”. If it says \”airplane\” then you must do it in an airplane. You can combine these so the 3 hours cross country could also include some or all of the night requirement in §61.109 (2). Note that the first paragraph of this regulation, paragraph (a), states 40 hours of flight time. This could be in any aircraft so your helicopter time counts for the total.

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  2. vaflyer on May 08, 2020

    Look at the regulation for the rating that you wish to achieve. Take the Private Pilot airplane §61.109 aeronautical experience. You must complete the flight time for \\\”airplane\\\” such as \\\”(1) 3 hours of cross-country flight training in a single-engine airplane\\\”. If it says \\\”airplane\\\” then you must do it in an airplane. You can combine these so the 3 hours cross country could also include some or all of the night requirement in §61.109 (2). Note that the first paragraph of this regulation, paragraph (a), states 40 hours of flight time. This could be in any aircraft so your helicopter time counts for the total.

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  3. ghogue on May 09, 2020

    I’m a retired Army aviator as well, rotary and fixed-wing. I was an IP and Flight Examiner in both categories, but have never been a CFI. Take my answer with a grain of salt, I’m not well versed in these training requirements and I’m mostly responding based on two Chief Counsel Letters of Interpretation.

    You will have to perform a certain amount of time solo and that will require you to act as PIC during that training. You will also most likely need to act as PIC during the practical test unless the examiner is willing to act as PIC.This is where a problem may present itself.

    You say you haven’t flown in five years, so you’re going to need a CFR 61.56 Flight Review to act as PIC during the training and evaluation. Since the only ratings you hold as far as I can see from your post is Rotary-Helicopter, the Flight Review will have to be conducted in a helicopter.

    There are two CC Interpretations that deal with just this situation. Beard 2015, and Bennett 2016. In Bennett they say they are referring this issue to Flight Standards Service for consideration of a rulemaking change that would allow a person with a Sport Pilot certificate or higher to act as PIC during the solo training without meeting the requirements of CFR 61.56. That was four years ago and I’ve not seen any changes, but I may have missed them.

    As I’ve said, I don’t claim to be an expert in this. If there is away around the solo and eval requirements to act a PIC, I’m hoping someone will correct what I’ve said.

    Additionally, if you don’t have a link to the Chief Counsel interpretations, this is it:

    https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/agc/practice_areas/regulations/Interpretations/

    Hope this works out for you. It may be quite expensive to complete a flight review in a helicopter just so you can do the training in an airplane.

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  4. KDS on May 10, 2020

    ghogue, you should look into getting your CFI based upon your military experience. I cannot spout the details off the top of my head because it was something I didn’t have to deal with, but I do know the rules changed a while back and are somewhat similar to the FAA’s military comp test that you may have taken right out of flight school.

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  5. ghogue on May 11, 2020

    KDS, thanks for the encouragement, but I think that ship has sailed for me. Careerwise and medically I’m pretty sure I’m beyond that. You’re correct, there was a change made to CFR 61.73 in 2009. Relatively easy to obtain a CFI from reading the regulation. I had considered that but other events got in the way. Now I’m content to just sit and read the forums. I rarely post much nowadays. In this case, I just thought it was important to pass on the flight review requirements. It’s something that could be overlooked easily. I do hope there’s a way the regulation can be amended to accommodate people working on additional ratings. Bad enough to try to do the training in a helicopter, can you imagine a former military pilot who only has a powered-lift rating? That would be really difficult.

    Thanks again for the encouragement and recommendation. I hope others see this and make use of it.

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  6. Eugie on May 12, 2020

    Former CH-47D/F dude as well. Never got my commercial rating in flight school but just took the MCN exam and working on getting it now. Planning to do the same thing to just to fly for fun. This site lists the req’s for a SEL add on with commerical rotary.

    https://inflightpilottraining.com/helicopter-to-fixed-wing-add-on/

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