Ask a CFI: How Often Should I Fly During Training?

Productive training is not only tied to how many times per week you can fly, but also to how much you can retain from those flights. Finding the right training frequency means taking both into consideration.

The most efficient training schedule is unfortunately not always the one that fits your lifestyle. The key is to find a balance that allows you to make good progress while still meeting your personal and professional needs.

When learning something new, our brain and body need repetition to help remember that information or motor skill. With regular practice, what we learn gradually becomes part of our long-term memory. In the same way, when we stop using knowledge or skills, they can gradually fade to the point of being forgotten completely.

This means consistency matters, especially for beginners or when working on a new skill. It may be more efficient to fly once a week, every week, than thrice in one week and not at all for the next three weeks.

The risk of having gaps in training, especially when a skill has not been mastered yet, is forgetting so much between sessions that repeating an entire lesson may become necessary. This can be amplified if no studying is done between lessons. Knowledge is an important part of flying, so preparing for lessons and keeping your knowledge fresh can help limit the effects of forgetting.

Frequency is also an important factor, as practicing more often usually offers better results. But this is only true up to a certain point and under the right conditions.

For full-time students, a good general pace can be three to four flights per week, which leaves room to study between lessons and gives you time to process new information and build on your progress. For more advanced students, the pace can be more relaxed as long as your skills do not regress between lessons.

There is no magic number, as it depends on how you feel during training and how you progress toward your goals. If you feel overwhelmed by your training frequency, then spread out your lessons even if you have time to fly more.

For part-time students or full-time workers, it can be challenging to accommodate more than one to two flights a week.

But free time is not the only factor when planning your training; it’s also important to consider the quality of that time. If you are tired, preoccupied, or simply not available mentally and physically, you will not be able to absorb what you are learning efficiently and make the most of your training.

In both cases, not practicing often enough or overpracticing can slow down progress, bring it to a stop, or even lead to regression.

The problem is that when progress is slow or even hard to see, it can increase the overall cost and time needed to complete your training and seriously affect your motivation. In some cases, this can lead you to stop training before reaching the finish line.

If your schedule doesn’t allow regular flight lessons, ideally at least once a week, you might consider waiting for a better time when you can dedicate more attention to your training and increase your chances of success.

Also, keep in mind that external factors such as weather or aircraft or instructor unavailability can lead to flight cancellations. This can increase the time between sessions, especially if your schedule is not flexible. With an open schedule, it may be easy to reschedule a canceled flight within the next day or two, but with limited availability, it could mean not being able to fly for a couple of weeks.

Flight training is not cheap, and it is not a simple task either. There is a lot of knowledge to acquire along with motor skills to develop.

Before starting training, it’s important to make sure you have enough time and energy to fly regularly under good conditions to make steady progress and reach your goals.

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