Definition
The portion of a student's training that takes place on the ground rather than in the aircraft, covering classroom instruction, briefings, debriefings, and study of aeronautical knowledge required for a certificate or rating. It is recorded separately from flight time in the student's logbook and counts toward the ground training requirements specified in the applicable FAA regulations.
Plain English
Time spent learning on the ground with an instructor — in a classroom, at a desk, or during a briefing — instead of time spent flying the aircraft.
Context Anchor
Seen in training syllabuses, lesson plans, and student training records where ground instruction and flight instruction are tracked separately.
Why Pilots Care
Ground training time is required and creditable toward certificate minimums and must be properly documented separately from flight time.
Intuition Check
Do not read “ground” here as taxiing or time when the aircraft is touching the runway. In this term, “ground” means the non-flying instruction part of training.
Example Sentence 1
The syllabus allocated three hours of ground training time to cover weather theory before the student moved on to the cross-country flight lessons.
Example Sentence 2
She logged three hours of ground training time after the weather briefing and before the actual flight lesson.