"Ben Jackson" wrote in message
...
On 2005-04-10, Matt Barrow wrote:
"Greg Esres" wrote in message
...
Our flight school has received a C182 with a G1000. The checkout
requirements are going to be 5 hours VFR and an additional 5.6 hours
for IFR pilots.

Does anyone find this excessive?

To fly a new generation $350,000 aircraft, no.

Considering the difficulty in scheduling rental aircraft for real travel,
I think a 10+ hour checkout is going to keep people away in droves.

If not that, the $216 an hour will.


The new avionics should be mastered on the ground with a simulator (or
a real unit with an external power source). There's no point in turning
the hobbs meter until you know how to run all the gadgets. A competent
instrument pilot should be able to get into the plane after studying and
do enough approaches to be comfortable in an hour or two.

Some, especially the computer savvy could probably do it in that time.

I got a 182 checkout (the first high perf airplane I flew) in about 1.3,
which included stalls, steep turns, and landings/go-arounds in every
configuration. We didn't take off until I had correctly rehearsed the
power and engine management on the ground.

That's pretty unusual. Usually 1.3 hours is hardly enough time to run but
about 4-5 touch and goes.

I transitioned from mainly a T182 (rental) to a T210 (ownership) and my
insurance company wanted 10 hours of dual. The FBO/School that trained me
wanted five hours dual to fly the T182 before solo after learning in a 172.

So I would tend to think that anything more than (rounding way up) 5 hours
would just be milking the renter.

Or their paranoid (justifiably?) insurance carrier.

If they can't do it in 5 hours then
they have other issues with currency/proficiency but that shouldn't be
reflected in the FBO minimums.

Probably, but I suspect that, as someone else pointed out, it's probably a
matter of insurance.

It's the $216 an hour that I found bizarre.