Thoughts on Flight Training

In this section I give some thoughts on the topic of flight training, specifically on the initial stage, the Private Pilot Licence (PPL). There is already tons of material on the Internet about this topic, so I will try to give a more original perspective.  

How do you know if you have the aptitude for flying?

The expensive way

Almost anybody can start flight training. All you have to do is drive to your local flight school, get some initial paperwork completed, get paired with an instructor, and away you go. All the initial flights are done with an instructor on board, so as long as you pay the bill at the end of each lesson, your flight training is not endangering anybody. 

Does that mean you should?

Pilot aptitude is hard to test. There is obviously an academic component, which can be roughly measured with school grades or standardized tests. But that is only one component, and we all recognize the stereotypical absent-minded professor who can ace the standardized tests but barely ride a bicycle. 

If you don't have the aptitude for flying, this is what will happen: as the training flights progress, it will slowly become evident that you are not keeping pace with the concepts that are being taught. Your flight instructor will have to balance a line between giving you the benefit of the doubt, and politely suggesting that you reconsider your plans on flying. Your flight instructor is not getting paid too much, and is likely eager to build hours, so you can assume they might have a little bias to keep your lessons going a bit longer than they should. 

So, if you really don't have the aptitude for it, you may end up completing 15 to 20 hours of flying before calling it quits, which will translate into several thousand dollars. Not fun. 

The profitable way

I would propose the following, especially for younger people: find an airport nearby, and go work on the ramp for a summer or two. The bigger the airport, the better. Ground service companies often hire a large cohort of baggage handlers right before the busy season, so you can look for jobs around March or April. They expect to lose most of this cohort to attrition after a few months, but they do it anyway, probably as a clever scheme to keep down labor costs.

The ramp is a fast-paced environment, with all kinds of ground vehicles, trucks and airplanes constantly moving about. It is a loud environment, where communication often has to be done with hand signals. If you perform decently in your first two months, you'll be offered classroom and practice training to get an airport vehicle operator permit. Only about half of the training cohort will pass; airport driving is harder than city driving. The half that does not pass will keep their jobs, but they will work inside in the bag room or in the terminal. (Sidenote: many people prefer to stay inside.) 

If you can handle the ramp environment, and can get decent grades in math and physics at school, then you can be confident that you have enough aptitude for flight training. This approach has these benefits:

• you are getting paid instead of spending money

• you will make friends with other people who are into flying

• getting your airport vehicle driver permit will unlock many other ground ops jobs at the airport

Also, you might find that you like working at the airport so much that you decide to forgo the flight training and just make a career out of ground operations!

Why learn to fly?

I worked on my PPL the year after I graduated from undergrad. During training I was lucky and got a job working as a dispatcher at the flight school. During this year I was able to observe a steady flow of students coming and going as they worked their way through flight training. The students at the flight school could be generally divided into three categories:

(1) There was a cohort of students from a major Chinese airline. The flight school was contracted by the airline to train these students from scratch, through to CPL plus all the extra ratings like multi-engine, IFR and so forth. Once they finished this training program, the cohort would be sent to another training center to get type-rated on an airliner like an Airbus A320. Every once in a while one cohort would leave, and another cohort would start. 

(2) There were a lot of young people (late teens to early 30s) working independently on their training with the intention of becoming commercial pilots. Most would be working one or more part-time jobs to fund their training. Down the road, many of them ended up flying for airlines.

(3) There were a fair number of well-off (I don't mean that negatively) individuals training with the intention of one day owning their own plane for personal use. They were often business owners. Examples: one owned a few fast-food franchises, one was a high school principal, one owned a few hardware stores, and another had an IT consulting company. 

But there is one more, smaller category that needs to be mentioned: students working towards a PPL with no intention of flying immediately afterwards. Is this a valid reason for flight training? I would say: yes. I fell into this category, and in the last 10 years I have met several other individuals who have done the same thing. They are usually engineering graduates who, instead of following up their undergraduate degree with an MSc or MEng, choose to work on a PPL. The cost and effort required are about the same, and, depending on what you want to do, the benefit of a PPL may outweigh the MSc or MEng. In my case the decision to get a PPL paid off almost immediately: the week after I flew my PPL flight test, I found a job posting for a performance engineering position whose requirements were an undergraduate engineering degree plus flight experience.  

Cost

Financial Cost

When I finished my PPL back in 2013 the total cost came out to about $13k CAD. That price tag is almost certainly higher today due to inflation caused by the reckless expansion of the money supply by predatory oligarchs of the ruling class in their desperate attempt to maintain hegemonic grip over errr, complex economic and political factors. A breakdown of the costs can be found on most flight school websites. Some cost estimates cite 45 hours of flight time. This is the legal minimum; realistically, you should budget for about 70 - 80 hours. I think the only people who can attain a PPL in 45 hours are those who have grown up in an aviation environment; for example, those whose parents owned a plane or were airline pilots, or those who enrolled early in an Air Cadet program.

Time

You can ballpark 6 to 12 months from start to finish for a PPL. More on this in the next section. 

Obscure tips for PPL success

Tip 1: Clear your calendar

The best way to do your PPL is to completely clear off your calendar for 6 to 12 months so that you can focus. If you are not able to do this, I would reconsider the whole project. Flying requires your complete attention. A portion of the PPL flights are flown solo, meaning there's no instructor to bail you out if things go south. You do not want to be doing solo flights if you are distracted by money issues, school exams, job stress or personal problems. 

Tip 2: Work at an airport

If you're able to find a job at the flight school, or just at the airport where your flight school is, you are ahead of the game. If you are too young to work, ask if you can do some volunteering. The more time you spend at the airport, the more immersed you will be; you will become an insider. Working as a dispatcher, I was able to hear all the flight instructors talking about how their lessons went, what crazy things their students did that day, and what's going on in the job market.

Tip 3: Expect weather cancellations

Working at a flight school in Southern Ontario, the weather cancellation rate I observed for training flights was over 50%, in both the summer and winter seasons. Build this number into your training timeline to avoid frustration. Also bear in mind that sometimes these cancellation decisions can't get made until just a few minutes before a flight. And, consider the silver lining: this climate is good for your education. You will develop more experience watching weather, reading forecasts and making weather decisions than your counterparts who are training in fair weather areas, where the skies are always sunny and calm. 

Tip 4: Avoid airborne commuting

A large amount of PPL training flights involve practicing maneuvers like steep turns, stalls, and spins; for safety reasons, these must be flown over sparsely populated areas like farmland. If your airport is in an urban area, you may end up burning a lot of time and money flying in a straight line, "commuting" to and from practice areas. 

Tip 5: Sit in the plane

If you have developed a good relationship with your flight school, you can ask to spend time in one of the parked planes after hours, where, with the battery and engine off, you can practice procedures. You can do this by pointing to or lightly touching the controls, without manipulating them; this exercise will build muscle memory. This is especially useful for procedures like the engine-out checklist and your pre-landing checks. This may sound stupid until you think about how much money it costs you to do this when the engine is running and there's an instructor next to you. 

Tip 6: Be physically fit 

Flying in small planes is demanding on your mind and body, especially on scorching summer days. Sports like jogging, cycling and swimming are good for building endurance. I would also avoid processed food and pop. 

Tip 7: Print out the Flight Test Guide 

During training you are going to be bombarded with information. Fortunately, everything your flight examiner is going to be looking for is already written up in a concise Transport Canada document: TP 13723E, also known as The Private Pilot Licence Flight Test Guide. Find a .pdf version and print it out into a binder. Refer to it from Day 1.