While it varies from one jurisdiction to another, usually a total of 20 solo flights and 2 hours of flying time must be accumulated before the solo student can be recommended for licencing. During this period students should fly with an instructor every 5 flights, or once every 14 days which ever comes first.
Regardless of the suggested check flights, do not hesitate to give students more dual training if they do any unsafe flying during this time. Do not assume that they will perform better by just doing more flights. Students at this stage often need reinforcement of their training, particularly if they have gaps in their visits to the airfield. When difficult flying conditions prevail, as with high winds, solo student flying is often limited. This is a good time to fly with an instructor as a ‘safety’ pilot so the student can gain some useful experience along with a check of their general proficiency. In addition to the flying requirements, this is often the time when more study is done for written examinations to meet the licence requirements.
While students on these check rides should demonstrate overall skills, it is often better to pick a theme rather than just go over the standard proficiency routines. Look for something in the prevailing conditions to challenge them or broaden their understanding. They now should be ready to learn new things having solidified some of their basic skills. While they are coping with the new material, observe how they perform the basics and give a good critique of their performance in this regard. Having said this however, stick to skills that they can exercise. The new material should not include aerobatic flight other than spin practise or the wingover. These manoeuvres should only be practised with an instructor until the student is licenced.
It is recommended that during this period, the student still remain flying the dual-seat aircraft that they soloed in. Unless a single seater has virtually identical flying characteristics the vast majority of students should spend some further time integrating their solo flying experience before we make them a test pilot on the next new aircraft they will fly. This is quite important when you consider how little flying time solo pilots can have. Total training time to solo can be as low as 5 hours! Flying operations
will experience a significant decrease in incidents with low-time solo pilots if they are allowed to complete at least 20 flights in the training two-seater before moving on to other aircraft. Operations that are using higher performance aircraft for basic training such as the Twin Astir, ASK21, and the like should consider even more flights before making such transitions.
There is a tendency at this time for other pilots to want to expand a student’s experience with flights in other types of aircraft. Unless such pilots are instructors, students should be steered away from these types of flights. This is a time to reinforce the basic flying skills not to learn knew bad habits.