Just about everyone can relate to that dream of soaring aloft: the freedom, the beauty, and the spectacular, breathtaking wonder of getting your feet off the ground and into the air. It’s that dream that leads many to flight training, and it’s that dream that led you here.
When you first sign up for flight training, there’s a good chance you don’t have much of an idea about what you’re getting into. Sure, you’ve flown in airplanes before and you’ve seen plenty of pilots in cockpits in the movies, but you’ve never actual been there at the controls yourself, steering a massive (or a minute) flying vessel made of glass, plastic, fiberglass, and metal through the air.
What’s involved in taking those first steps to become a genuine pilot?
You might be surprised, but flying – once you’ve got the general hang of it – isn’t all that different from what you already know. In fact, you’ll find you tend to use aircraft pretty similar to how your more terrestrially-oriented friends use their automobiles – it’s just that you’ll be covering a lot more ground, a lot faster, with a lot less traffic (and nobody honking his horn).
In this post I’m going to arm you with the knowledge you’ll need to learn fast, get yourself aloft, and become a talented, experienced pilot in no time. I’m going to tell you what’s in store for you when you begin your flight training – and I’m going to help you figure out exactly what kind of flight training will suit you best.
Flight Training Pre-Work: Know This First
Before you sign up for flight training, you’re going to need to settle on a few things.
The first one of those is: why do you want to learn to fly?
There are a number of reasons you might want to fly, including:
- You want a career as a commercial airline pilot or charter aircraft pilot
- You travel frequently and would prefer to fly yourself rather than book a ticket
- You want to know how to fly for fun, for the pure joy of it
It’s incredibly important you know this, because it’s incredibly important you communicate your reasons to your flight school instructor to help him point you to the right classes. Imagine winding up four classes into learning advanced avionics before you decide you really just want to fly for fun! But this happens sometimes – people who aren’t sure what they want end up starting down a side path they didn’t intend to. Knowing the path you want to head down nips that one in the bud.
The next question to ask yourself after, “Why do I want to fly?” is, “What kind of flight training do I need?” Because believe it or not, there are several different flavors.
Accelerated flight training is the option of choice for the student in a hurry to learn to fly fast – but it’s going to take commitment. You won’t be able to take accelerated flight training if you have a job or school – or you’re going to need to take a little time away from those pursuits before you can. That’s because taking an accelerated flight training course means you’ll be eating and breathing aircraft flight until that training’s over.
While the total immersion might distract you from other things, the benefit of this method is that it vastly expedites the learning process – and it takes less time overall, too. Believe it or not, accelerated flight training can allow you to learn the same skills and abilities as someone in standard flight training in as little as 55% of the total training hours.
Self-paced flight training is the more typical route flight students take, attending training a few hours a week, often on weeknights or weekends. This approach to flight training offers a greater amount of convenience and flexibility, but at the expense of expediency – it’s going to take you between 75 and 80 hours in the sky and the classroom to get your pilot’s license this way.
So again, your choices there are:
- Accelerated flight training, or
- Self-paced flight training
… and you should choose whichever one best fits your situation, obligations, and how quickly you need to be in the air.
Getting Your Pilot’s License: Kinds of Certificates
A pilot’s “license” isn’t actually a license – it’s a pilot certificate. But in the more common vernacular, it’s become known as a license. You should understand however that when we say “pilot’s license” what we’re really talking about is a pilot certificate.
And there are different kinds of pilot certificates available. The two most common pilot certificates you’ll encounter in the United States are:
- The Recreational Pilot Certificate
- The Private Pilot Certificate
Additionally, there are a handful more certificates you can earn:
- The Student Pilot Certificate
- The Sport Pilot Certificate
- The Commercial Pilot Certificate
- The Airline Transport Pilot Certificate
For the purposes of this post, as an introduction to the basic nuts and bolts of flight training, I’m only going to consider the recreational pilot certificate and the private pilot certificate. I’ll go into the details on each, and how this impacts the kind of flight training you should seek.
Flight Training for the Recreational Pilot Certificate
First off, eligibility – to get the recreational pilot certificate, you need to:
- Be 17 years old or older
- Speak and read fluent English
- Hold a third class medical certificate or greater
If you’re here reading up on flight training, I’m guessing that, in all likelihood, you’re most likely older than 17 years old, and I’ll take it on faith and the fact that you’ve read this far that your English is probably pretty good. So the only thing in that list that might be a little scary-looking is the medical certificate.
What’s a third class medical certificate? Simple – it’s just a piece of paper that says, “Yes, this individual is healthy enough to fly an airplane.” So long as you don’t have anything that’s going to render you unconscious mid-flight or suggests your expiration date is approaching really fast, you’ll be able to get this in a snap.
How do you get a third class medical certificate? It’s pretty straightforward – just head on over to your local aviation medical examiner, get checked out, and collect your certificate. There are around 6,000 such Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized physicians around the country – you can use the FAA’s locator for them here: locate an aviation medical examiner.
Back to the recreational pilot certificate.
The number of hours of flight training required for the recreational pilot certificate are lower than those for the private pilot certificate. That’s because it’s a restricted license – you can only travel within 50 nautical miles of your home base, you can only carry one passenger, you can only fly a single-engine airplane of 180 horsepower or under with 4 seats or fewer, you can fly only during daylight hours in good weather, and you can’t fly through airspace requiring communication with air traffic control or airspace higher than 10,000 feet.
But… you can fly.
As a result of the limitations on the recreational pilot certificate, you won’t need to go through as much cross-country navigation training, and you won’t have to go through any night operations or fly-by-reference to instruments training at all.
Ultimately, the recreational pilot certificate offers the quickest way to being able to fly solo, for the lowest amount of time, money, and training.
Flight Training for the Private Pilot Certificate
If the limitations of the recreational pilot certificate feel too great, undergoing flight training to become a certified private pilot is the option you’re probably going to want to take.
What’s the difference between a private pilot certificate and a recreational pilot certificate?
They are as follows:
- The limitation of a 50-nautical mile radius from your home base is removed – you’re now free to travel anywhere in the United States (other than areas with restricted airspace) and even foreign countries (so long as you remain in compliance with their regulations, of course).
- The one-passenger limit is gone – with the private pilot certificate, you’re free to carry as many passengers as you like, and fly an aircraft with as many seats as you like.
- While you remain limited to a single-engine aircraft, your maximum horsepower allowed goes up – from 180 to 200.
- Some of the weather restrictions are lifted, though you remain limited to flying under visual flight rules (VFR) – unless you add on flight training for instrument flight rules (IFR) too, allowing you to fly even when it’s raining hard or foggy outside. And regardless whether you get IFR certification or not, you’ll be able to fly at night with a private pilot certificate.
- Instead of a 10,000 foot flight ceiling, you can now go as high as 18,000 feet.
Your flight training will take a little longer when you’re going for a private pilot certificate than it will for a recreational pilot certificate, but the freedom it allows may very well be worth the additional cost in time and money to you. You’ll need 40 hours to get your private pilot certificate, to the recreational pilot certificate’s 30.
Aeronautical Knowledge: Passing the Test
If you remember above where we discussed self-paced training and mentioned it took between 75 and 80 hours, and you read the sections immediately above and noticed that only 30 hours of flight time are required for the recreational pilot certificate and 40 hours for the private pilot certificate, you might be asking yourself where the disconnect is. What gives?
Well, the answer to that question is, flight training isn’t just about what you do in the sky – it’s about what you put in your head, too. That means classroom time – or study on your own. Whether you do it with a flight school or you do it from home (provided you’re motivated enough to stay focused and keep at it), you’re going to need to learn what you need to learn in order to pass the pilot exam.
Sound scary? It’s not that bad. But you do need to score at least a 70% mark on the test – otherwise, you’ll be taking it again. A good flight training school is going to help you get there pretty reliably – assuming you’re doing your part and studying and paying attention in class, too.
Once you’ve passed the knowledge test on the ground, you’ll have 2 years to pass the practical test in the air – and if you’re really going to learn how to fly, that ought to be the fun part, so it shouldn’t really take you 2 years after you put your pencil down.
Deciding Where to Get Your Flight Training
Deciding where you want to get your flight training is a straightforward process, but it’s one you’ll want to pay some attention to. Just like you don’t want to buy a used car from a dealership with a bunch of jalopies sitting around on the lot and a sign half-hanging off the storefront, you also don’t want to sign up for flight school at the wrong institution.
Things to keep in mind:
- Look for experience. Find instructors who know what they’re talking about and who’ve been flying and training new pilots for a long time – not ones who are still trying to wrack up their own hours to upgrade to a more advanced certificate. You want the instructors who are there for you – not for themselves.
- Look for order and clarity. Is there a clearly defined, FAA-approved syllabus the instructors follow? Are prices clearly outlined for everything? Are there clear rules and regulations the instructors stick to and enforce? In avionics, precision rules the day when it comes to safe and successful flight and flight training; be heartened if you see it (and if you see disorder, chaos, and confusion, run the other way as fast as you can).
- Look for current equipment. That includes very well-maintained late-model (or newer) aircraft, a Level III (or higher) flight simulator, and gear in good use and good repair.
- Look for customer service. What guarantees does this flight school offer? How responsive are they to phone calls and emails? Are the people there happy – or do they treat it as “just a job”? You want a to find a place that you know you’ll have a good experience training at – and that any problems you might encounter will be promptly and satisfactorily addressed.
Flight training isn’t like a regular class – it’s not about spending a lot of time in a classroom, staring at a chalkboard or a projector screen for a couple of semesters. Instead, it’s about getting into the air – about flying an airplane beneath the clouds – or through them, or even above them. It’s about soaring over the fields and cityscapes and lakes and ponds and forests and towns below you, and learning how to move through the skies to get where you want without the hassle of sitting in gridlock. It’s about never having to go through road rage again – unless, that is, you set your newfound freedom aside and decide to go for a drive again.
Although, I’m not sure why you’d do that.
Ready to find somewhere local near you to get your own flight training? Check out the links on the side of the page. And if you liked this post, please share it with your network via the links below – you never know who might be dreaming of flight right now.