While only 20 hours of flight time is required for the sport pilot certificate and 40 hours of flight time is required for the private pilot certificate, the total process usually takes several months and hundreds of hours due to commuting, ground training, aircraft preflight, canceled lessons due to bad weather, airplane maintenance, etc. Expect the sport pilot certificate to take half the amount of time as the private pilot certificate would take.

A typical chronological order of flying time follows. The numbers on the left are the minimum using our Private Pilot Syllabus and Logbook, under Part 61.

    14.5 to 16 hours  -- Presolo (dual)
     2.0 to  5 hours  -- Solo
     5.0 to  7 hours  -- Precross-country (dual)
     5.5 to  9 hours  -- Cross-country and night flying (dual)
     7.0 to  8 hours  -- Cross-country (solo)
     7.0 to 10 hours  -- Preparation for practical (flight) test (dual and solo)
    ----   ---
    41.0    55

Your sport pilot certificate can be obtained in as little as two weeks (one month for private) with near full-time effort. A more realistic timetable is 1 to 2 months for sport and 3 to 4 months for private. The ideal situation is to fly at least 1 to 2 times per week to maintain a higher level of proficiency.

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