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don’t have to run a business or manage a practice to afford the jet they fly; all they do is learn to fly jets. Training is extremely regimented and fast-paced, with little tolerance for those who can’t keep up, even when they are well along with their training. Those who can’t pick things up quickly are washed out.
Most civilian, single-pilot jet pilots live in a different world, where flying airplanes is secondary to what they must focus on professionally. They do not face involuntary elimination from training. If they can pay the bills and pass a medical they can continue to fly. If they fail a check ride they can take it again and again as many times as they want until they pass. So “military pilots step right into jets, so can I” is not a valid argument for the single-pilot jet hopeful.
However, working your way up the line step-by-step is no guarantee of success either. Just because you fly a particular model of airplane does not mean you have mastered it, and to paraphrase what they say in financial circles, past performance in less-complex or capable airplanes does not guarantee success in the next step up. Whether you build experience incrementally or you leap to the top, success—and survival—require these traits:
• An attitude of continuous learning, with a commitment to study outside the cockpit every week;
Continued on page 23.
Individuals who buy, train religiously and become skilled in a technically advanced aircraft, such as the Cessna TTx or Cirrus SR-22 tend to make
the move to a light jet easier.
18 • TWIN & TURBINE
February 2017
Flying Direct To Jets
Leading Light Jet Instructor Discusses Moving from Piston
With high-performance airplanes increasingly used as initial aircraft, it’s becoming more common for pilots to fast-track themselves directly from first airplane to jet. In- troduction of the Eclipse 500 and Citation Mustang led to the concept of a “mentor pilot,” an experienced right-seater – usually, but not always, a certificated instructor – to guide the new jet pilot through the transition after earning the type rating but before the pilot flies completely alone in the cockpit.
There is no requirement for this aerial internship in the Federal Air Regulations. If you’ve passed the type ride you’re qualified, as far as the FAA is concerned. The insur- ance industry, however, frequently requires 25 or more hours of flight time of Supervised Operational Experience with a mentor pilot.
2010 National CFI of the Year Jeffrey Robert Moss is one of the best-known jet men- tor pilots in the industry. MossY is typed in several single-pilot jets and has had enormous success in creating highly qualified jet captains
from low-experience pilots who have made the
leap from first airplanes, usually a Cirrus SR22 or
Cessna Corvalis/TTx. Part of that success, he says,
is inherent in the pilot who buys one of these
technologically advanced piston airplanes as a first
aircraft.
“They like to be on the cutting edge of technol- ogy,” Moss said. “They want to go higher, faster, farther.”
These pilots are comfortable and completely
proficient with the ubiquitous G1000 flight deck.
They might not be thinking about jets when they
first learn to fly, but they tend to consider airplanes
“people movers” rather than the traditional pilot
who flies more for fun. As they see the freedom
and utility of personal flight and their travel needs
call for more speed and capability, they look past the array of intermediate airplanes and move right into the light jet that happens to permit a single-pilot crew.
Moss doesn’t just fly around with new jet owners. He follows a stringent 25-hour flight syllabus that delivers a lot of experience in this short span of time.
“That’s what the mentor pilot is there for,” he added, to “take them out of their com- fort zone” and put them in crafted, real-world situations that force them to make deci- sions about weather, fuel reserves, and approaches at nontowered airports.
“About 10 percent of them can’t complete [the syllabus] in six days and need more time,” MossY reported. “Seven of 10 of those were typed in a simulator” and had little or no actual airplane time before beginning their mentorship. Lest you think this is
marketing, Moss is a simulator instruc- tor as well. However, he prefers to “type in the jet, then verify in a simulator.”
In Moss’s experience, pilots who move directly into jets are “much more receptive to training” than those who have worked their way up the tradi- tional way. He prefers pilots to earn their multi-engine rating in the jet so they don’t have to unlearn the “mixture, prop, throttle, identify, verify, feather” routine used in piston twins, which is contrary to how engine-outs are han- dled in jets.
His experience is that pilots who have a lot of unsupervised flight time in tur- boprops have much more difficulty
becoming single-pilot jet proficient, because they must unlearn a lot of their turboprop and piston habits. Overall, Moss thinks the glass cockpit single-engine piston to single- pilot jet transition is “the most efficient path to a type rating” in a single-pilot jet.
Jeffery Moss