Pilot's license

[TeddyRuxpin]

Chaps, I'd appreciate any advice you can pass on with regard to me getting my PPL.

I have absolutely no flying experience, I am 28 years old, now based in Leeds (half an hour from LBA), and I am a teacher so wouldn't have an enormous amount of spare time. However, what spare time I do have I'd like to devote to working toward a PPL.

A collegue at work's brother flies privately from Church Fenton, and I am also lucky enough to have a pal flying commercially (ex-XL) but now in Nigeria. Hence not got a hotline to him right now!!

Anyway, I was wondering what sort of cost, time, effort, head-in-book time I'm looking at to achieve it a reasonable time (and I'm also relying on you guys to let me know what amounts to "reasonable" in terms of a time frame!)

Google etc is all well and good for getting black and white information, but if anyone has "real life" advice to offer then I would be EXTREMELY appreciative of your thoughts.

Thanks one and all :ok:

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Why not bell, or visit, your nearest flying club where you'll get all you need to know from the horse's mouth.

Cost wise... I don't know precisely but likely to be an arm and two legs in the UK. When my son tried it cost him around £6k, 10 years ago, and he never finished it due to problems with the flying club.

There's a goodly amount of studying of various subjects including meteorology, navigation, air law, etc.

Good luck...

[pploony]

Teddy,I learnt at Leeds,many years ago now.Your option there is Multiflight,who are a perfectly good organisation.The downside of Leeds is that it is busy,and expensive,but a good environment to learn at.You don't say which side of Leeds you are on,but I fly at Sherburn now,which is alot cheaper,and has good aircraft availability.It is possible to get a ppl in a matter of weeks,but this would be full time,and heavily weather dependent.Most 'leisure' flyers would take approx 50 hours,and it took me 10 months to complete.As regards cost have a look at the relevant websites,and multiply the rate by at least 50! Wherever you do it,I guarantee you will not regret one minute!

[Pilotdom]

Teddy,

If you do your PPL at Leeds it will be with Multiflight. They have an introductory night once a month I think, have a look on there website for the next meeting, go along and have a chat. I reckon you'll be looking at £8k if you do it at Leeds.

If you go to Sherburn or Full Sutton you'll be looking at around £6.5 - 7k, thats what mine cost at Sherbs. You'll take around 50 hours to get your poo brown wallet. It really is as good as everyone says it is.

[The Heff]

As you say that you're a teacher, that presumably means that you get long summer holidays. So you've got then got the time to commit to a full-time flying course over August. Should be decent weather for it too.

If you can commit full-time for a few weeks that will mean you can do the course cheaper as you can shop around for a residential course (I recommend Sandtoft but I'm biased :O), plus ask ithe clubs if you can bulk-buy hours in advance at a cheaper rate.

Good luck!

[pa28r driver]

u might want to have a look at a residential course in europe over your lenghty summer break rules are the same but weather is better
i did mine over a couple of years starting in newzealand,continued at dundee and completed at norwich. i would have preffered to have done it in one "hit"but there were no options in those days.spain appears to be popular
best of luck and welcome to the fraternity
regards pete

[BroomstickPilot]

Hi Teddy,

Your post does not indicate whether you merely wish to fly for fun or whether you intend to go professional. This makes a huge difference. If you only wish to fly for fun, then you do not need to go the PPL route, whereas if you intend to go professional and become an airline pilot then PPL is the only way to go.

Assuming you only wish to fly for fun, the other options are the NPPL, (which is a UK licence that only permits you to fly in the UK, but has less onerous medical requirements and no requirement to do instrument flying) and two axis and three axis microlight flying.

Two axis microlight flying is the cheapest form of powered flight with open cockpits and flexible wings. It requires different skills to ordinary flying, and is a lot of fun and well worth considering.

Three axis microlighting provides the very best small private aeroplanes currently available. They outperform all the ,Group A' training aeroplanes currently used by flying clubs (most of which date back to the 80s), and you can learn from a non-licenced site, which reduces the hourly rate. The only downside is that being legally microlights their weight carrying capacity is limited.

Broomstick.

[batninth]

Teddy

I concur with Broomstick on the NPPL, and that 3-axis microlight is less onerous than the NPPL(SSEA).

There are three schools I can think of to the north of Leeds where you can do an NPPL(M), and I believe you can also do the NPPL(M) at Crossland Moor?

Similarly I can think of a school doing the NPPL(SSEA) just over to the east of Leeds.

I did my NPPL(M) up near Thirsk, PM me if you want some more background on that.

Batninth

[Them thar hills]

Bat9
There's no microlight training at Crosland Moor now.
The other airfields where training is available are

Rufforth
Bagby
Felixkirk
Baxby
Linley Hill
Sandtoft

TTH

[Rightbase]

I did mine by booking a lesson a week (on Sundays - I use Saturdays to rest up). Some weeks the weather stopped me, but not too many, since I was prepared to fly for the experience, and not just for the curriculum.

I took 5 months to solo, 2 years to licence. Up to ppl status, I enjoyed the flying as much as any I've done since, especially the nav challenges with an instructor adding to the challenge (by tossing in distractions etc.) if it was getting too easy...

Cost to ppl was never an issue for me. The cost of flying was all that mattered; the ppl arrived when it was ready. The licence is nice to have - it allows me to take other friends as well now, but mostly they are less fun than the instructors.

If you are below retirement age, it should on the law of averages take you less time than it took me.

Go for it.

[juliet india mike]

I learned at Full Sutton. Handy for Leeds, best value anywhere. Instructors like to teach and you will have good consistency, no waiting for clearance etc and they use Humberside when ATC environment is needed.

I did mine in 46.3 hours (but I had been dreaming about it for 50 years.)

One of the instructors there was a schoolteacher who has fulfilled his dream in a big way and is now CPL, Multi engine, IR, Multicrew, etc etc and Flight Examiner. He offers fast track PPLs if you are in a rush (weather permitting) Google thegreatcircle for more info.

Warning, flying is addictive and can seriously damage your wealth!