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#1
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Experience Question
Hello All....
This may sound silly, but I would like to hear some opinions on a matter presented to me this evening. I recently got my ticket. I started 5 years ago, and due to certain circumstances, I had to take 4 1/2 years off, then I picked up and did 10 more hours of training to prep for the checkride. My total hours to date are 63.8 with 26.7 of those being solo time. Okay, that being said, my In-Laws made a comment to me tonight about flying with my children. Actually, they put it in the context of "do you really think it is a good idea to fly with your children until you get more hours....." followed by "....Larry (one of the In-Laws) didn't fly with family members until he had 300 hours....". I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Comments? Fred |
#2
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"Fred Choate" wrote in message This may sound silly, but I would like to hear some opinions Tell 'em your kids are your kids, and they're probably a damn sight safer flying with you than they are driving with anyone who would start a question with "do you really think its a good idea....", or flying with someone with such obviously low self confidence as "Larry". |
#3
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Fred Choate wrote:
I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Comments? Fred I took up my first passenger as soon as I got home from the checkride (same day). If I had any family I would not hesitate to take them up right away. No one ever knows it all. Even after thousands of hours there is something new to learn. I found out that the license to fly just tought me how to get the plane up and down safetly and not much else. 4 years after I got my ticket, a friend taught me how to land. Since then I haven't bounced a landing but theres always room for improvement..... |
#4
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"Fred Choate" wrote in message ... Hello All.... This may sound silly, but I would like to hear some opinions on a matter presented to me this evening. I recently got my ticket. I started 5 years ago, and due to certain circumstances, I had to take 4 1/2 years off, then I picked up and did 10 more hours of training to prep for the checkride. My total hours to date are 63.8 with 26.7 of those being solo time. Okay, that being said, my In-Laws made a comment to me tonight about flying with my children. Actually, they put it in the context of "do you really think it is a good idea to fly with your children until you get more hours....." followed by "....Larry (one of the In-Laws) didn't fly with family members until he had 300 hours....". I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Comments? Fred Flew my first on the way back to the field after taking the check ride. Actually, you can make a fairly good argument for a pilot being very sharp right after passing the check ride. After all, you DID just demonstrate to competent authority that you were both qualified and ready to accept this responsibility. Do they REALLY think you'll become less competent 24 hours later? :-) There are stats that will show a definite area during your tenure as a pilot based on hours and experience that will show a higher and lower accident rate during these periods, but these are national averages. Your competence was fine passing the test, and you should be just fine taking the kids for a ride. As for the "family" being concerned about your lack of "experience", I don't think you want to get into the old counter argument to this that tells them about the 20,000 hr ATP who flew his airliner into the ground and killed 300 people in the process! THAT will REALLY worry them!! :-) I would approach the issue with a genuine concern for their "uneducated" feelings about this, and calmly bring them up to speed with the reality that you have finished what can easily be said to be a highly concentrated and advanced training curriculum that has culminated in you taking an extremely difficult and demanding flight test given by a test examiner. You have been cleared as competent to fly safely with passengers, or you couldn't have survived this gauntlet. They should be very proud of you. You have earned the respect of your peers in aviation, and if you walk them through a process that allows them to realize this for themselves, this is EXACTLY what will happen for you. Best of luck, Dudley Henriques |
#5
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Fred Choate wrote:
I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. I have mixed feelings. God grants a special dispensation to newbies and morons. You are going to do some bone headed things in your next several hundred hours of flying. With any luck, there'll be no consequence more serious than embarassment. So... what should you do? In my case, I flew my parents around sometime in my first 100 hours or so but I didn't carry them any distance at all until I earned an instrument rating. I had the added advantage of my dad being a command pilot in the USAF, albeit retired. You want to get your inlaws off your case? Get an instrument rating ASAP. I got my private license in February of 1978 and finished my instrument rating that November. The following May I took my commercial check ride. Why? It wasn't so much that I wanted to fly for a living as I felt it added standing to my flying ability in the eyes of my passengers. And it does. Take your kids on passenger hops. Leave them for those cross country trips in questionable weather. -- Mortimer Schnerd, RN VE |
#6
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"Fred Choate" wrote in message ... Hello All.... This may sound silly, but I would like to hear some opinions on a matter presented to me this evening. I recently got my ticket. I started 5 years ago, and due to certain circumstances, I had to take 4 1/2 years off, then I picked up and did 10 more hours of training to prep for the checkride. My total hours to date are 63.8 with 26.7 of those being solo time. Okay, that being said, my In-Laws made a comment to me tonight about flying with my children. Actually, they put it in the context of "do you really think it is a good idea to fly with your children until you get more hours....." followed by "....Larry (one of the In-Laws) didn't fly with family members until he had 300 hours....". I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Comments? Fred About 30 minutes after the DE signed my temporary certificate I was up with family members. It would have been sooner but I took time to get a sandwich and an iced tea. |
#7
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"Fred Choate" wrote in message ... Hello All.... I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Comments? Fred My kids were my first passengers, right after my pvt. checkride. Go for it! Have fun. John Severyn KLVK |
#8
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Thank you for all the comments. I want to say that there is no question for
me as to what I will do, but I was curious about the general feelings in the aviation community. One of the biggest motivations for getting my license, was to enjoy the experiences with my kids. My 9 year old daughter was completely thrilled when she was sitting right seat, scanning the sky for other aircraft and picking out landmarks. I am hoping that she will be inspired to pursue aviation at a young age, rather than waiting until later in life, as I did. As far as experience, most of you have stated exactly how I feel about it. CERTAINLY, I have much to learn, and I look forward to learning it. But, as with most everything else, learning is more fun when you can experience the ups and the downs with those you care about. Making sound decisions is part of being not only a pilot, but a parent as well. We all make the decision to put ourselves and our kids at risk everytime we go to the grocery store in our vehicle....(yes we have all heard that before). I think the thing that struck a chord with me in this case, is that said In-Laws are both aviation people. One was a multi engine, IFR rated pilot (he hasn't flown for years however), and the other never finished. Thier son is a captian of an ERJ-145 on the East Coast. They have many friends that are pilots. So the comment made to me struck me a bit odd, and just made me think about hidden adjenda's and things like that. Thank you all for your comments, and support. My daughters birthday gift this year will be her own flightbag and headset for those short hops with Dad. Looking forward to read more comments........thanks again. Fred |
#9
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"Fred Choate" wrote in message
... [...] I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Good! I suppose a little bit of worry is a healthy thing, but the best thing is for a new pilot to not only be competent and safe, but to FEEL competent and safe. One of the worst things about new pilots is that they don't have enough confidence in the skills that they actually DO have. Comments? Your friend makes an excellent point. It is true that new pilots, having less experience, are at greater risk for certain kinds of accidents. The same thing is true of new drivers, of course. So, it clearly follows that when your children obtain their respective driver's licenses, you would NOT want them riding in a car with such an inexperienced driver. So, if you refrain from flying with your children so soon after getting your pilot certificate, make sure you are consistent and refuse to let them be in the same car with themselves when they are driving so soon after getting their driver's license. If you can figure out how to do that in a practical way, let us know. Otherwise, I think the bottom line is that many of the things you may do with your children are probably dangerous, including driving around town or on the highway in a car. For any given exposure, its' pretty well established that driving carries a lower risk than flying, but your children probably have a much greater exposure to that risk than they do to the risk during flying. In any case, life is not without risks, and if there were enough reason to worry about killing your children in a plane crash, there would be enough reason to worry about leaving your children fatherless in a plane crash. IMHO, the solution is not to avoid the risk, but to do what you can to minimize it. That means flying carefully, using good judgment to decide when and where to fly, and to not push the limits too far, whether you are solo or with your children. As far as your in-laws are concerned, if they consider it reasonable for them to second-guess your parenting decisions, it seems to me they should be expected to submit to you their planned weekly activities, so that you can review them and make sure they aren't exposing their children to any significant risk. Remind them that taking their children on one car ride per day exposes them to roughly the same risk as you flying with your children on one flight per week. That the playground is a very dangerous place and should be avoided at all costs. That restaurants are known to violate (intentionally or not) health code designed to protect them from food-borne pathogens and toxins. That their children should not be drinking from any water source that has not been tested thoroughly by them, whether that's a water fountain, bottled water, tap water, or whatever. Or, they can keep their mouths shut and let you make your own decisions about raising your children. If and when your in-laws themselves are pilots, and they have informed themselves about the risks involved, then they *might* have reason to comment. In the meantime, they can safely be told that they don't actually have any justification for thinking you flying with your children is a bad idea, other than their own invalid preconceptions about just how dangerous flying is in the first place. It's not like you're taking them rock climbing, for crying out loud. Pete |
#10
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Rock climbing is definitely out of the question........
Fred "Peter Duniho" wrote in message ... "Fred Choate" wrote in message ... [...] I didn't even respond. My question to you folks is simply, how long did you all wait before you decided it was safe to fly with your family? Myself.....my kids were the first passengers I took up, and I felt completely safe, prepared, and at ease with them in the aircraft with me. Good! I suppose a little bit of worry is a healthy thing, but the best thing is for a new pilot to not only be competent and safe, but to FEEL competent and safe. One of the worst things about new pilots is that they don't have enough confidence in the skills that they actually DO have. Comments? Your friend makes an excellent point. It is true that new pilots, having less experience, are at greater risk for certain kinds of accidents. The same thing is true of new drivers, of course. So, it clearly follows that when your children obtain their respective driver's licenses, you would NOT want them riding in a car with such an inexperienced driver. So, if you refrain from flying with your children so soon after getting your pilot certificate, make sure you are consistent and refuse to let them be in the same car with themselves when they are driving so soon after getting their driver's license. If you can figure out how to do that in a practical way, let us know. Otherwise, I think the bottom line is that many of the things you may do with your children are probably dangerous, including driving around town or on the highway in a car. For any given exposure, its' pretty well established that driving carries a lower risk than flying, but your children probably have a much greater exposure to that risk than they do to the risk during flying. In any case, life is not without risks, and if there were enough reason to worry about killing your children in a plane crash, there would be enough reason to worry about leaving your children fatherless in a plane crash. IMHO, the solution is not to avoid the risk, but to do what you can to minimize it. That means flying carefully, using good judgment to decide when and where to fly, and to not push the limits too far, whether you are solo or with your children. As far as your in-laws are concerned, if they consider it reasonable for them to second-guess your parenting decisions, it seems to me they should be expected to submit to you their planned weekly activities, so that you can review them and make sure they aren't exposing their children to any significant risk. Remind them that taking their children on one car ride per day exposes them to roughly the same risk as you flying with your children on one flight per week. That the playground is a very dangerous place and should be avoided at all costs. That restaurants are known to violate (intentionally or not) health code designed to protect them from food-borne pathogens and toxins. That their children should not be drinking from any water source that has not been tested thoroughly by them, whether that's a water fountain, bottled water, tap water, or whatever. Or, they can keep their mouths shut and let you make your own decisions about raising your children. If and when your in-laws themselves are pilots, and they have informed themselves about the risks involved, then they *might* have reason to comment. In the meantime, they can safely be told that they don't actually have any justification for thinking you flying with your children is a bad idea, other than their own invalid preconceptions about just how dangerous flying is in the first place. It's not like you're taking them rock climbing, for crying out loud. Pete |
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