[acslater00]

If anything FAA regulations for recreational pilots can be absurdly lax. You can get a private pilot certificate with iirc 25 hours of flight if you go to a flight school in the middle of nowhere, and as far as the FAA is concerned as soon as you pass your flight test you can go transition SFO airspace at 1000 feet that same day (I have done this).

You can go 20 years without touching an aircraft, and as long as you have a valid medical, a flight instructor can give you a 1 hour checkout flight and do 3 landings and you're officially a fully current pilot.

Some people refer to the first 100 flight hours after you receive your first license as the 'death zone' because the pilot is generally so unprepared that even a minor problem becomes life threatening.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I was a Private Pilot student some 20+ years ago and I was surprised to read this so I investigated. It's still 40 hours for PP but 30 for Recreational. That really surprised me.

I stopped my training when I had just short of 40 hours. The only required procedure I hadn't completed yet was the night flight time. But no way would I have felt comfortable flying passengers at 30 hours. Hell, it was around that time that I ran into problems both with an engine refusing to shut off on the ground (student using the airplane after me didn't read my notation in the log and broke the throttle cable trying to shut the engine off), and on another airplane, the engine hesitating when I throttled back up during a stall recovery.

Minor details, but it's coming across stuff like this and learning to deal with it that makes the extra flying hours valuable.

Like the GP, I'm generally against regulation, but I agree that the FAA seems too lax in this case.

[pavel_lishin]

> Like the GP, I'm generally against regulation, but I agree that the FAA seems too lax in this case.

Are there other fields where you're very familiar with where you're still against regulation? It seems odd to me that you're for regulation in a field where you recognize the reasons for it, but are against it in general, implying areas where you don't have much expertise.

(Reminds me of when someone in Profession X sees the news get stories and facts about their profession wrong all the time, but continues to trust the news on stories about other fields. I forget what that phenomenon is called.)

[bmm6o]

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/08/the-murray-ge...

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I will admit that my comment was poorly phrased.

It's better stated if I say that I prefer to err on the side of less, rather than more, regulation.

[msellout]

It'd fit into a broad interpretation of the Lake Woebegon effect.

[gmoore]

While those flight time requirements are 'true' they are not accurate. I've been a flight instructer for 30 years and have never signed off on someone with only 40 hours...the national average still hovers in the 60+ range...

[amyjess]

> If anything FAA regulations for recreational pilots can be absurdly lax.

Not if you're transgender. I've heard from multiple people in the trans community that as soon as the FAA finds out a pilot is trans, they immediately begin treating you like a potential terrorist. They'll order you to immediately turn over your license and won't give it back until you've gone through a ridiculously onerous set of psych evals.

The FAA actively and deliberately holds trans people to more stringent standards than cis people, and they treat trans pilots like criminals.

[magic_beans]

Source?