Just saw an article about the captain, saying she had iver 500 hours of stick time in the UH-60. My favorite comment: "How can the Army let someone with that little experience fly? That's less than three weeks of experience! That's criminal negligence!"
Well, I guess. If you did nothing but fly 24 hours a day non stop, 500 hours would be around 21 days. But since no one flies 24/7 for days in a row...
Anyone know how long it takes to rack up 500 horse of flight time?
It really depends. There is a fair amount of flex in "how bad do you want to go fly" vs. "are you doing broadening assignments". Commissioned officers are different than Warrants as well, as they are expected to do more regular army stuff to round out their experience.
Flight school is about 200 hrs, give or take, but they wouldn't all be on the -60. The CPT is being reported as having 500hrs in the -60, not just total flight time. Somewhere between 2 years(if she was just all about flying and nothing else) and 5 years (If she did PLT leader time, Captain's Carrer Course as resident, broadening assignments, etc) is probably likely for 500 flight hours.
To be an O3 she had somewhere between 4 and 7-9 years time in service. Between her known assignment at the WH and assigned to the VIP Helicopter unit, I think we can assume her career was progressing at the fast end promotion wise.