Which training? Which licence? Complete Newbie
Hello everyone.
I have been reading the forum for years as an interested amateur. I have been wanting to learn to fly since childhood, and now, finally, I am in a situation where I can afford to get started and have funds available for a little bit of flying once qualified!
My question now is where to start? I am thoroughly confused around NPPL, LAPL, PPL and which licence to start learning on. I have searched and read many threads, but there was been much talk of April 2018 being the deadline for EASA licence conversion, so now I'm not sure if what I've read is current or not. Please forgive me if a lot of these questions seem stupid.
To give you a bit of my thought, I think in the short to medium term I will be very happy flying fixed wing microlights (eg the C42/EV97) - it will let me fly to lots of small out of the way Scottish airports and will be cheapish (at least compared to the light aircraft) and I'm your stereotypical (tight!) Scot. I probably have little interest in flying to the continent at the moment and would say all of my flying in the next 10 years would be in the UK.
However, the other half is from the Philippines and so at some point in the future (probably in quite a while - 10+ years) I would want to fly there as well. The dream would be able to live in a remote area and fly in and out as I please (its a long term dream and isnt going to happen in the next 10 years).
Which brings me back to where to start:
It seems I could train for the NPPL (M) at either Perth, Strathavan or Balado (all about 30mins to 1hr drive from where I live in central Scotland) at a cost of circa £5000. All 3 seem to have a good community which I expect would open opportunities for finding a share once qualified, or at least a good group of others to learn from.
Alternatively I could train at Cumbernauld for the LAPL or PPL. The advantage here is I'm 10 minutes away, although the cost will be around £7000+. I am still very likely after qualifying to want to fly the smaller planes anyway, but I'm thinking the LAPL might (or might not?) give me more flexibility?
Am I better doing the NPPL (M) and upgrading at a later date if I need to? How do you upgrade, as reading it seems to be that you would have to do the full 30 hours training in a class A (?) plane anyway to upgrade from a NPPL (M)? If I do the LAPL can I still use that to fly microlights, or do I have to retrain on them as well (other than just a check flight)?
What would others do in my situation? I think my best option at the moment is to do a trial lesson at each of Strathavan, Perth and Balado and then maybe one at Cumbernauld, and then decide the best route?
Any help, advice or specific recommendations would be greatly appreciated!