Kenny Keller explains that in the U.S. you can start helicopter flight lessons before finishing ground school. They run concurrently. Solo requires 16 years old, your license at 17.
16 years old.
17 years old.
30 minutes (commonly runs longer, ~1–1.5 hours by his admission).
brian@brianhelicopterground.com.
574-767-1797.
Hey, it's Kenny with helicopter airline ground school. I've got a question today from a young man who signed up for our ground school. And this is a great question that we get a lot and we cover this a lot. To start your flight training, you can take an introductory lesson and start taking lessons anytime, basically. Okay, his question was, he says he's getting conflicting information that he was told by someone that he's got to complete the ground school before he starts flying and be signed off. So the very simple answer is no. Maybe at a certain school somewhere they have that reason, or maybe in some other country. But in the US Basically, you can start flight training anytime you want. You can call up a flight school, take an introductory flight, start taking lessons. Most generally, you do ground school and you do flight training at the same time. You kind of do it hand in hand together. Now there are people who do a whole ton of studying and show up at their flight school ready to go with ground knowledge. Like our young man that I mention all the time, Johan, that I love talking about because Johan's such a great success story. He shows up at his flight school in Florida and walks in and they check out his knowledge. And the ground school instructor goes, wow, I'm ready to sign you off for the ground. Let's start flying. And moved to another instructor to get a second opinion. And the second instructor thought, oh, right, yeah, this guy's ready. And that young man named Travis emailed me. He's like, kenny, I gotta tell you about Johan. He shows up at our flight school literally ready to go. He had all of the ground knowledge. And he goes, we just start flying. And three weeks later he had his ratings because we didn't have to do ground. He had it done. He did his written within a few days, three weeks later, as private. He said, because all we had to do is just fly, fly, fly. So to reiterate, you can start flying at any time. You don't have to wait until your ground school is complete to start flying. And he went a little more in depth and he was, you know, spelling the requirements that you need for the private pilot rating. And he is correct on those questions? Yes. All Those things, the 40 hours, the cross countries, the things that you listed and read in the Far aim, that is all stuff you have to complete. But this is a great question because we get this a lot and people ask it all the time. Well, hey, you know, I heard I have to do all the ground stuff first. No, you don't. You could start flying anytime and he also asked about age. You can solo at 16 and you can get your license at 17. And I know that for a fact. We've done that. I've soloed a kid on his 16th birthday and a year later on his 17th birthday he got his private pilot ready. So that answers that question as well. So a great question. I appreciate this young man sending it in. He is a ground school member, brand new, and he just responded to our email that, you know, we say, hey, check in with you after a couple days of signing up. Say, hey, how you doing? How you liking the videos? And he said, hey, I like the videos, Kenny, but I just got some questions. So that. There's your question. Yeah, you start flight training anytime you want. All right, well do us a favor and subscribe the channel. Click the bell to be notified of new videos. We're doing something every day in May. It's world's getting a little better. Hopefully things are gonna start opening up and we got tons of people in there working on their written and working on their oral test and we appreciate that. We have Brian Rutledge, operations manager full time, has given half an hour consultation to any member, brand new or whether you've been a member for eight years. Brian will talk to you on the phone and help you out with whatever it is you might be struggling with. Everybody usually runs into some kind of a hurdle, a learning plateau or a problem at a flight school. So Brian is there for you and you schedule that either by just emailing brian@brianhelicopterground.com you can also text or call Heather who is our office manager. She's manning the phone line seven days a week. You can call or text 574-767-1797. And Heather can answer most all the basic questions about learning to fly and or our membership. If it's something that she can't handle, she always refers that on to us. And she can also get your information to Brian to set up your free consultation. It's a 30 minute consultation, but Brian by his own admission has said that usually it turns into about an hour, hour and a half. So it's pretty nice to have that available for someone when you want that person, that third party to talk to. And Brian is a 30 year aviator, just retired from the sheriff's department for 25 years. He's an airplane and helicopter instructor. And we like that because I'm just a helicopter CFI only, so I can't answer a lot of the fixed wing stuff. Brian coming from airplanes, first he can answer a lot of those questions. For those of you that are transitioning from airplanes to helicopters, I can tell you what I know and have seen, but I only have private privileges in an airplane. So Brian's a lot more detailed in that area of fixed wing moving to rotorcraft. So subscribe, click the bell, give us a thumbs up. Leave your comments down below. Oh yeah, and helicopterground.com is right below this video. There's a link right there. That's where you can go check out our memberships. You can go for 24 hour test flight on any of the monthlies and see what it's all about. Then we also have a big professional pilot package. Includes private commercial, CFI instrument. All those details are down below helicopterground.com so subscribe, click the bell. We'll see you tomorrow.
