How long to solo?

[Bill Greenwood]

The day a student takes their first solo is a big one, and most of us remember it for years. For me it was after about 12 hours and I was flying a Cherokee 140. I recall saying to myself, "don't worry too much about the landing," since I was not a landing expert, but I was very good at takeoffs, so, "I'll just go ahead and takeoff and take the landing as it comes", and of course it worked out fine, just like most solos.

It seems the norm now to solo in 12 to 20 hours, some take much more even 30 hours. But it is interesting to read how long some of the folks in history took to get up in the air alone.
The quickest that I have read is Hap Arnold, later Air Force Gen, Arnold, who soloed in 3 hrs.and 48 minutes. Is there a catch? Well sort of, Hap was one of the first students at the Wright Bros flying school at Huffman Prairie . Of course they had expert instructors who were not just building time to get an airline job, since there weren't any airlines. And the airspace was uncrowded and uncontrolled, no other planes to worry about or some FAA disk jockey yammering away in your ear. And they certainly didn't have any complicated glass cockpit to decipher, as a matter of fact they didn't even have a cockpit of any kind.

The next fastest solo I know of was a test the AOPA instructors did. Some years back AOPA had a great program called Pinch Hitter,which is theory was if a passenger such as a spouse were to take over when the pilot was incapcitated and land the plane. The format was to have a long class session like Friday afternoon, and learn about how the controls worked and enough radio basics to call for help. Then on Sat and Sun THEY ACTUALLY FLEW. They took the non pilot part of the duo up in the family plane and had the non pilot actually fly, and by Sunday the non pilot could and did make several landings themselves Half the people were reluctant to do the course on Fri and by Sun. eve almost all had a huge attitude change and they had some confidence that they could actually land their plane since they had just in fact done it.
This was a great program and as for as I know never had an accident, but lawyers got involved and stopped the flying part and now Pinch Hitter means only the classroom part.

Anyway, just for fun a couple of the CFIs decided to find a student to start completely from scratch and see how quickly they could do a simple solo in a simple plane, just take off in a C-150 and go around the pattern to land, nothing else, but solo. They found a lady who knew nothing about flying, she was in fact a Las Vegas showgirl and didn't hang out at the airport like most of us. So they gave her the basic lessons and in 5 1/2 hours she safely made her solo flight. The CFI who told me the story said the lady was like a blank slate, can't recall if she even drove a car, and was so great looking the CFI had a hard time concentrating on his work. I am not sure of the rest of the story, don't recall if she went on to become a pilot.