The path to flying seaplanes has two lanes. You can go directly to your seaplane pilot rating, called the ASES (Airplane Single Engine Sea), as your first pilot certificate or, most commonly, you can obtain it as an add-on rating after you already hold the ASEL (Airplane, Single Engine Land) rating. One seaplane instructor estimates that probably 99% of ASES ratings are add-on, and that about the same percentage of ASES ratings are acquired in floatplanes rather than monohull seaplanes (also called flying boats).
If you’re already a private pilot and looking for reasons to do this add-on, let’s get you started toward your ASES with this excerpt from William O. Young’s new book, An Aviator’s Field Guide to the Seaplane Rating.
A former airline pilot who has flown professionally for more than 30 years came to me for Airplane Single-Engine Sea (ASES) add-on training because he was considering buying a seaplane. Neither of us was surprised that he excelled in his seaplane training and had no difficulty whatsoever with the checkride. After the checkride, he told me, “I’ve got 14,000 hours, I’ve been a 747 captain, I’ve owned an airline, I’ve done this, I’ve done that—but this is the coolest thing I’ve done in aviation!”
By contrast, I had maybe 500 hours, all in piston singles, when I got my ASES rating. But my reaction at the time was exactly the same as his, and over the years I’ve found that this reaction is the rule, not the exception, among new seaplane pilots, regardless of what kind of flying they’ve done before—and I’ve also found that this feeling doesn’t fade away. Before I had my seaplane rating, I had the opportunity to ride as a passenger on a Kenmore Air turbine de Havilland DHC‑3 Otter flight from Roche Harbor in the San Juan Islands to Seattle’s Lake Union. As we were boarding, the single pilot said (too quietly, I thought, because I almost missed it) that someone could sit in the right seat if they wanted to. I was at the back of the line of passengers waiting to board, and I may or may not have knocked women and children in the water as I sprinted for the front and jumped in the right seat. During our short but spectacularly beautiful flight I asked the grey-haired pilot, who was about to retire, what kind of flying he had done before. He thought for a while, and finally replied, “You know, I don’t really remember. I came here when I was 18 to do this for a summer, and I just never saw a reason to do anything else.” I understood completely.
If that isn’t enough to make you consider it, maybe the promise of, as our ASA Sales Manager, Greg Robbins, says, “the most fun [you’ve] ever had flying” will encourage you to try. Young also adds the following pitch for why flying a seaplane just hits different:
There is something liberating about flying floats. Much of our “regular” flying is regimented and structured, and most of the time it really needs to be that way for safety. But in a seaplane, in addition to the fact that it’s usually beautiful just to be on and above the water, you make many of your own rules. It’s you, not an air traffic controller, who decides where and in what direction you’re going to take off and land—and you may be the first person ever to land a seaplane where you’re landing. You, and no one else, must find out whether there’s a power line in your approach or departure path. There is almost never an ATIS or AWOS where you will be operating, so you must essentially build your own ATIS based on your observation of the water surface and surroundings. When flying seaplanes, you spend most of your time at much lower altitudes than when flying land planes, and you sometimes may ask yourself, as you’re skimming over treetops on approach to a landing on a lake, “Do we really get to do this?” (We do.) And when operating seaplanes, you must develop (just like a sailor) a constant awareness of, and ability to assess, the speed and direction of the wind, both while flying and while taxiing on the water. And in the end maybe that is the essence of flying floats: Operating a seaplane safely requires you to be more self-reliant, and more observant of and connected to your environment, than any other form of fixed-wing flying.
Whether you’re interested in adding this rating or heading straight for the water, ASA has a book that will help you make the transition. In addition to the newest release, An Aviator’s Field Guide to the Seaplane Rating, you will also find the FAA’s Seaplane, Skiplane, and Float/Ski-Equipped Helicopter Operations Handbook (FAA-H-8083-23) available from the website. ASA’s June Essential Read, Seaplane Pilot by Dale DeRemer, offers a great way to review the information, or, for a more personal journey, check out Burke Mees’s Notes of a Seaplane Instructor.
