How many hours to transition to a new non-complex SEP type for day VFR operations?

There are may different angles and view points on this.

Firstly there is a difference between a checkout in a type that you’re experienced on, but in a different school/environment.
Then there is a transition to a new type in the same school/club that you’re already flying with
And finally, there is a transition to a new type in a new school/club.

The first one should shouldn’t take very long. If you’re familiar and competent on type, then it shouldn’t take long for the instructor to see this. But clubs & schools are quite rightly concerned about their aircraft, and if they are in an area with lots of controlled airspace, their own reputation. It doesn’t take too many incidents of poor visiting pilots causing problems local for it to cause problems for the school/club. The difficulty here is that a pilot can seem competent, and it’s only when they are left on their own that their planning goes out the window or when they are under pressure that their decision making is poor. There may be a tendency here for the clubs/schools to want an instructor around longer to be surer of the pilots attitude (rather than skills). I’ve certainly heard about people who have gone from one club to another, leaving havoc behind; they appear competent, but have some questionable decision making. I suppose the correct answer is that the club/school should decide whether they want to rent out their aircraft for once off type situations or not, and if so, then accept that you can only check the pilots skills, rather than long term decision making, and you do a checkout for 1 to 1.5 hours. That should be plenty to tell if they are capable or not. But the answer may well be, “no, we’re not interested in once off rentals”.

Then there is the second situation where a pilot is staying in the same club/school but changing to a new aircraft type. This should be relatively painless as the pilot is a ‘known quantity’. This will come down to how current you are, how much experience you have, how many different types you’ve flown, and how similar the aircraft are, and if there is new stuff (eg constant speed prop, retractable undercarriage or turbo). For many the actually learning time will be little. But organisations are naturally nervous of letting someone with little experience of retractable undercarriage or turbos loose with their pride and joy until the pilot is really comfortable with it, for fear that under pressure they’ll forget something and cause a lot of damage. Maybe the extra hours are nothing to do with learning but rather experience building.

Finally, there is the worst of all, new organisation and new type. Here the organisation are looking at a pilot of unknown quality transitioning to an aircraft that is new. They have the concerns about the pilot’s decision making and about the complexity of the aircraft for the pilot.

But were it comes to once off rentals, anything more than 1.5 hours really isn’t practical for the renter. Nobody is going to do a 5 hour “conversion” so that they can do a 5 hour round trip after the checkout.

Alexis wrote:

The usual 10 hours of the Cirrus transition program should be an average if you want to fly IFR

There are two distinct transition training syllabi for Cirrus aircraft. One is for VFR, and the other for IFR. I’ve done only the VFR one, and 100 % of my IR training on SR22 full flight sim and plane. Still, afterwards I had unreasonable requests from some places in the US (WVFC) who wanted me to do an additional IFR transition training (10 hrs) plus 10 hrs “Cirrus checkout” per person (we were 2 pilots with Cirrus experience) plus an additional checkout with a different instructor plus any “re-training” from that checkout, as they advised in advance. That would have been at least 45 hours of dual for the two of us before they’d maybe let us fly one of their precious planes!

Somewhere else they had given me hopes that after finishing the transition training with them (which I did, after 7 hours the instructor told me he didn’t know what else to do with me as everything was to satisfaction), the SR20 they had indicated I could rent was unfortunately not available as the owner wanted to do one flight in that period. But I ended up getting an Arrow which served the purpose equally well.

Sometimes I think renting for solo flight isn’t really the goal of some “rental” outfits, and when you smell that you should run rather than walk.

JasonC wrote:

Airborne_Again wrote:
My next conversion (at about 100 hr TT) was to a PA32R and that took 3 hours if I recall correctly.
But essentially that was also adding retractable gear which adds time.

And variable pitch propeller…. It might not sound much but adding just those two were sufficient to cause me to need 3 or 4 hours dual until the UK club would sign me off to fly solo….

I cannot offer any views on this that has not already been mentioned, just my vote/opinion/experience on the original question.
I am mostly instructing in a club environment, and most instructor-aided familiarisations are1-1½ hours block time, very often combined with a SEP(L) revalidation. If I know that the pilot is capable and experienced, I might let him introduce himself to a new non-complex type or just do a short flight to point out a few important things to note.
Conversely, for some low-time pilots, I would not let them go from a PA-28-140 to PA-28-151 without a checkout, due to the very different nature of the two airplane’s wings.
Of course this is a club environment, but even the commercial rentals here would not require more than one lesson for a checkout as described.

To compare, when I was a 200 hrs VFR pilot, I was told to expect about 5 hrs for a PA-46 Malibu checkout, with the prospects of renting the Malibu afterwards. Fair enough.

huv wrote:

To compare, when I was a 200 hrs VFR pilot, I was told to expect about 5 hrs for a PA-46 Malibu checkout, with the prospects of renting the Malibu afterwards. Fair enough

That’s very fair, any maybe too little for most 200 h pilots. The PA-46 IMHO needs a very thorough checkout.

Unless the other SEP aircraft is different(1), the number of hours legally required is 0.
You must get familiar with the aircraft, the reading of the POH/Flight manual is legally sufficient. It can take a number of hours of ground study to get familiar with the POH/FM though.
I think that many flight schools demand more flight instruction (and less ground study) than necessary.
(1) there are 7 differences
EFIS
TW Tailwheel
P Pressurised
VP Variable Pitch
RG Retractable Gear
SLPC Single Lever Power Control
T Turbocharged.
To be allowed to fly a different aircraft, you must receive a training by an instructor, who will endorse your logbook.

Reading the list I notice that a mixture lever is not mentioned. I got my PPL on a Rotax powered Aquila which does have a VP prop but no mixture lever. Would I strictly legally need flight hours to transition to a C152/C172 (as mentioned further above my FI reckons about one hour of training for me)?

I think the Swiss FOCA was of the opinion that you would need differences training for a “downgrade” in variants (e.g. EFIS to six pack), but the German view (which is in line with the EASA texts, because neither “red knob” nor “six pack” are actually variants that could be endorsed) is that you don’t. But don’t take my word for it.

Would I strictly legally need flight hours to transition to a C152/C172 (as mentioned further above my FI reckons about one hour of training for me)?

No. A mixture lever is not considered “complex”.
Pilots that cruise at low VFR altitudes will probably always fly with mixture full rich.