By John Wyman, EAA 462533, Chapter 266 Montreal
For the longest time, I have been contemplating the hurdles to get a pilot license and FLY! It seems that the endeavour should be straightforward and well mapped out. I realize that it is NOT the same for everyone. No two people seem to have the same path when asked their experience, and it’s kind of a crapshoot finding the right person who’ll spark your interest — or one that’ll keep that interest alive.
I say this because of a few people that I’ve come across recently who unfortunately didn’t have such a positive experience when they started to learn to fly. They were being taught at a commercial school that had a vested interest in them as students. I mean, if you have a school that’s in the “business” of training people then of course you’ll say, “Sure, we’ll take you up and show you what it’s all about,” but is that person necessarily the best person for the task?
This is very much different than the kid who shows up at the airport, mulls around a bit, and asks some questions about how to fly — and then, if they’re lucky, gets invited up for a flight around the patch to discover what it’s all about. A friend of mine just did that in a Harmon Rocket II with a 12-year-old. Now THAT’S an introductory flight! Of course, I was just like that kid, but not everyone has the chance to have the fun and freedom to take it all in the first time around.
What gets my fur up these days is how long it takes schools to get a pilot to solo and to get the student up to snuff for the final PPL flight test. There…that’s off my chest. The blame really can’t be saddled on the school’s shoulders. It is a systemwide phenomenon that’s grown over the years from, I assume, the training sector and Transport Canada — the latter issuing the orders and the schools complying. Systemwide it’s an overabundance of regulations. In a nutshell, 35 hours used to cut it (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away), but in the past three decades, another 10 hours have been added. That came as five extra hours of basic instrument flying and five extra flying hours. Yet, has the accident rate gone down? What was the real purpose of adding them? I don’t really know. I do know that the increase in the minimum led to an increased cost, with the student only now getting the license, on average, at 65 hours before they are recommended for the test (roughly based on my research with CFIs).
In addition, the time to solo has crept up too. Five to 10 hours give or take used to be the norm. Now it’s 10-20 or much more. That means you are only achieving that thrill of being cut loose much later. I assume that when the PPL numbers were in decline, TC created the recreational license, our version of the sport pilot certificate in the United States. It was supposed to make it easier (minimum 35 hours), but the numbers say that isn’t really happening (again, from chats with instructors). The important thing to remember, when only talking numbers, is that these are all MINIMUM requirements, and the average numbers speak a very different picture. My instructor friend said that this article is representative of what he has experienced over his instructional years. What we can all agree on is that having a recreational or private pilot license isn’t the end all of licenses. It is a license to learn on your own. Then, if you have the means to afford to keep flying and learn — how do you do it without shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars per flight?
Unfortunately, there’s something else to point out about renting. It’s hard to discover the spectrum of what flying really is when there are restrictions on what you’re allowed to do. Most schools won’t allow you a whole day with the airplane and nearly all of them won’t let you land on your own at grass airstrips. The CFI who’s my main source for much of this banter even acclaimed that at least 70 percent of his students who never went on to own or share an airplane have given up flying, due to the cost and demands of regular life. In other words, as he pointed out, “it’s easy for you to forget that you might be biased” as I was raised in an airplane environment: my dad flying and fixing aircraft and my mom volunteering and helping him out at the airport. The next story is of someone who didn’t have that privilege.
One pilot completed their PPL and is battling to keep flying. After 250 hours, they had lost all hope of continuing due to the high rental costs. I asked, “When was the last time you had fun flying, and, has it ever been a passion? Did anyone else offer you a ride and an ‘experience’ outside of a commercial environment?” Their answer was muted (I could hear crickets) as they couldn’t remember when they were last inspired after a flight without having to study a chapter of a manual before the next ride. I ask…is that fair? What did that student do (or not do) to get so far along in their training and now be in a rut to get back into it?
To me, somewhere along the way, they must have lost their focus because it was no longer an adventure, and it became a slugfest. A huge part of the problem is keeping it fun and growing in the process. If you can’t see much progress in between $400 sessions while earning a living then how can you have the drive to see it through to the end? I certainly never got a kick out of renting a twin for what felt like the umpteenth time in my career just to stay current and marketable for the next job.
My suggestion to her was to rediscover the fun in it and go to places where there isn’t that vested interest in having the student only fly at their flying club. Some schools call themselves “clubs,” but is there really a shared cost in operating their airplanes? Most of those that do so are from days gone by where the “club” was just a loosely thrown-around term for a school that actually rented airplanes out. This is where a gliding club or cooperative aircraft group (multiple owners) can bring the cost down and keep it fun. Those will give you the flexibility to fly. Failing that…others out there might want to consider just sharing costs. Get some friends together, fill the seats (just like the airlines), and bring your cost per mile down. With avgas in the stratosphere today, it’s best to have those seats filled with paying bums. I’ve known several pilots over the years who’ve chipped in together on trips down to Florida and back — dramatically reducing their operating expenses and having fun in the process.
I made sure, when I started out, that the only way to keep flying was to not stop! It sounds ridiculous to say it like that, but it’s true. For me, that was to buy an ol’ beat-up homebuilt in a barn, fix it up, and…discover flying at $20 per hour! Those that I know who gave it up didn’t recognize early enough that a week becomes a month, and then, after a year, your checkout has expired before you know it. Boom! Now you need to get checked out again and invest more time just to get back in the saddle and comfortable in the groove. You’re paddling water (with your wallet) upstream! Maybe that last line is the most important thing to reflect on before spending anything.
Flying isn’t just about doing a lesson and writing the cheque. It is about learning on your own and wanting to master it. A boring manual won’t inspire you to do a slip. Doing the slip correctly and not overrunning the end of the runway will. You need to be exposed to as many facets of “everything aviation” as possible to have an idea of what it is about. It has to come from within — or, if it doesn’t, someone else will introduce you to something that tickles your fancy so that you won’t give up and will carry on. It’s hard grasping that some people who don’t have that passion still manage to make it to the flight deck, without ever knowing where the real fun is. That’s a bummer — yet it’s still an exception.
It probably all boils down to seeing what’s out there besides big, paved runways and control zones. That’s not where the fun is. They don’t call them control zones for nothing. Your freedom gets tossed out the window, and sometimes you’re ordered to follow a highway making an enormous detour to your route — especially if you’re fighting a headwind and grounding out at 60 knots. My wife got that one too many times from a controller, and she was mighty tempted to shout out “if I knew you were going to tell me to follow the highway again, I would have taken the (expletive here) car!” Ultimately, the FUN flying is out there at the grass strip fly-ins, corn roasts, breakfasts, gliding clubs, and any place really where you can swing the propeller to start the engine and not get stares of doom, but rather, smiles.
Keep at it…stay flying.
John Wyman, EAA 462533, Chapter 266 Montreal, is a passionate aviator. When he isn’t in the saddle at the airline, he can be found out at the airfield doing any number of things. He likes to fly gliders, practice aerobatics, work on airplanes, and fix stuff.