So 2024 is over. My first 6 months of flying are done. As of 6 months I’m ready for my commercial checkride, just waiting my turn to take the test.
I’m going to call that zero-to-commercial in 6 months, since the only factors slowing me down are out of my control. 😎
This is considered to be rather fast. The last several months I’ve flown more hours in a month than most of our instructors. Most students are going quite a bit slower.
Why did I do this? Well, I’m incredibly lucky. Between money saved up and available loans, I could afford to take the time off work and do nothing but flying. There’s no way I could have done this if I had to balance work in with it. I don’t fly Friday evenings or Saturdays, due to two board-game-night events we go to weekly, but every other day of the week I was trying to fly, and hanging around the airport trying to learn things when I wasn’t flying.
People do it faster than I did. They fly multiple times a day. You can do it in about 3 months, weather permitting. I wouldn’t do it that way though. I went into this wanting to get it done, but now that I have I’m glad I didn’t go faster. You need time to absorb things and spend more time talking to people and thinking through different scenarios and conditions. If I’d been done in 3 months I would’ve gotten done before the real clouds showed up and I would’ve graduated without ever flying in real weather.
So all in all I think it’s working out for the best.
The flying software I use tracks my year in review and has some interesting statistics:
That 0.9 though… Just needed to fly a bit more and I’d have around-the-world in 6 months!
As a software engineer I’m a little disappointed in foreflight, their averages don’t take into account the number of months I was flying, they just assume it was all year. Oh well, still cool to see!
A couple of notable trips on that map are my jaunt up to 1K1 in Kansas. Flew up there to get a hamburger. Actually it was because getting your Commercial certificate requires you making a 500 mile solo trip, but the story is better the other way. 😉
So what’s next?
I’ll take my commercial checkride soon, which allows me to get paid to fly. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of jobs you can get hired for until you’ve got quite a few more hours. Airlines for example are typically 1500+ hours required. So what most people do is exactly what I’m going to do: teach!
As soon as I get my commercial I’ll start working on taking my CFI, or Certified Flight Instructor, tests. Once I’m a CFI I’ll start looking for a job, and hopefully the school I’m at will be looking for someone! And then it’s just keep flying and building time, hopefully while getting paid, until I have enough hours to get hired for a big-boy job! (In this industry insurance rules, and companies can’t hire you until you’ve got the experience that their insurance policy requires.)
Onward and upward!