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

"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".

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.....

"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

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

"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.

"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

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

"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

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