It’s tempting to combine ferry flights with flight training—but such trips tend to hold surprisingly little instructional value.
Cross-country flights can be extremely useful for new owners who want to build time and learn the nuances of the caring and feeding of new-to-them airplanes. And bringing new owners along on repositioning flights is an excellent way for them to see the capabilities and limitations of their new aircraft in real-world situations. But when it comes to tailwheel endorsements, instrument training, or checkouts in highly specialized airplanes, the purpose of long ferry flights tends to be at odds with trainee needs.
I recently helped the new owner of an antique World War II trainer, for example, ferry a new-to-him airplane from the place he bought it in central Florida to its new home in Virginia—an 800-nautical-mile trip. The Fairchild PT–19 is the same type of airplane the new owner’s dad received his primary flight training in when he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1944, and the new owner bought it for purely emotional reasons. He is a vastly experienced professional pilot who brought me along because he lacked a tailwheel endorsement, and he’d obviously need one to fly this vintage aircraft.
It usually takes eight to 10 flight hours for a student to get the hang of tailwheel flying and earn the endorsement, and this ferry flight took about eight hours to complete. So, had the ferry flight done double duty? Did we kill the proverbial two birds with one stone by logging the right amount of tailwheel time? Not even close.
Ideally, tailwheel training requires multiple takeoffs and landings in a variety of wind conditions on different runway surfaces. Our ferry flight consisted of just four takeoffs and landings, all of them in light winds on relatively long, paved runways. That’s not realistic training.
We had an enjoyable time cruising along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts and wagging the wings at beachgoers who stopped what they were doing to watch the blue-and-yellow piece of aviation history rumble by. The new owner learned how to fuel and oil the PT–19, perform hot starts, and operate its ancient radio and intercom. But each takeoff and landing was separated by at least two hours of straight-and-level flying, and that put them too far apart for the student to drill, spot trends, or develop his own habit patterns. The marathon flight became a jumbled, exhausting blur.
The owner knew he had a great deal of tailwheel training to do when he got home, and he welcomed the chance to maneuver in the local area rather than hold a heading and an altitude all day as he did on the ferry flight.
An instrument student who bought a Van’s RV–10 in eastern Oklahoma had a similarly semi-useful experience when she brought the airplane home to California. She planned to log about 10 hours of IFR dual instruction along the way—and she did. But most of that time was spent droning along on autopilot, GPS direct, wearing an uncomfortable view-limiting device. She performed just one simulated instrument approach on that long flight, and it took place in visual conditions. We hardly saw a cloud during the entire 1,200-nm trip.
There was some training value in flying within the IFR system during that trip, and the RV–10 owner filed and activated a couple IFR flight plans. But spending 10 hours in a simulator would have been far more helpful to her from an IFR training standpoint than ferrying the real airplane.
Another ferry/training flight involved bringing a Waco YMF–5 biplane up the East Coast from Georgia to coastal Maine for a biplane ride operator. I provided some coaching from the front seat while the new Waco pilot, who would fly the airplane on revenue flights that summer in Maine, flew in the rear cockpit.
The Waco had extended-range fuel tanks that allowed us to fly four-hour legs, so we only landed three times during the long journey: in North Carolina, New York, and Maine. But to get comfortable in the Waco, what the commercial pilot really needed was about 20 takeoffs and landings at his home airport. He didn’t get those until we reached our destination.
The cross-country trip was fun and memorable, and going up the Hudson River VFR corridor in an open-cockpit biplane remains on my lifetime highlight reel of favorite flying memories. But from an instructional standpoint, the long trip didn’t accomplish much other than getting the Waco where it needed to be.
Ferry flights are meant to follow the straightest possible line from point A to point B with as few takeoffs and landings as possible. Training flights by nature involve a great deal of drill and repetition, often in the airport traffic pattern. It’s unrealistic to expect the requirements for one type of trip to align with the other. FT
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