How long does it take to learn to fly a glider?
How long does it take to learn to drive a car? It varies from person to person. If trained by winch launching, where usually you have a set of three flights as your lesson, anywhere from 60 to 100 flights is normal. And it doesn’t matter if you take more – it could easily be that the weather is not suitable for a first solo when you are close to the required standard. If training by aerotow, where you have a set of one flight at time, from 20 to 40 flights would be typical. If you visit the airfield once a week, that’s about 20 to 30 weeks. But the one week holiday training courses advertised at clubs can reduce the time dramatically if the weather is kind to you. You CAN learn to fly in a week – the RAFGSA have been running one week courses successfully for 40 years, but realistically, taking a two week course with good weather should have you solo. Learning to fly a glider isn’t actually difficult at all. For many people their total airtime is around 5 to 10 hours before their first
