In this video Princeton Flying School Instructor, Jeff Slutsky, explains the student’s progession of activities to become a private pilot.
When a student enrolls for flight lessons, there are two aspects to their flight training. The first is the flying part and the second is the ground part, learning the rules of aviation, how things work, how to do things in a certain way.
The student spends most of their time in the air learning how to fly. The FAA minimum is forty hours of flight time for you to get a private pilot’s license. The national average is about double that. But here at the Princeton Flying School we usually train students in about sixty to sixty five hours to get their private pilot license. The amount of time it takes to learn to fly depends a little bit on people’s individual abilities and sometimes their age or experiences. However, we have trained students as young as twelve and as old as eighty, so age is not an impediment, but it sometimes affects how long it takes to earn your private pilots license..
Princeton Flying School students will most often spend sixty to sixty five hours in the plane learning all the fundamentals of flight; learning how to fly to other airports, how to take off and land. At the end of that process the student will take a check ride with an examiner from the FAA to make sure they have learned everything properly.
Along the way there will be some ground training from your instructor who will teach you certain topics like aerodynamics, weather and of course rules and regulations. Then there will be a written examine that the FAA administers, which students can take here at Princeton Airport, which certifies that you have the proper knowledge to be a private pilot.