A lot of it may depend too, on where in the UK you live.
If you live in the south east/south coast, not being able to go to the near continent would be a serious limitation.
If you lived on the west coast, you may very well want to be able to take a trip over to Ireland.
On the other hand, if you lived in the East, North East, or North of the UK, then you might be quite happy to stay in the UK, given the distance from foreign shores.
If a candidate decided to go for an NPPL, and had reached 45 hours of training before being ready for a skill test, can they change their mind at that point, get a class 2 med, and take a JAA skills test instead?
As for the usefulness of the PPL vs the cost saving of an NPPL, then I think IO540 has it right. In the longer term people need something more than bimbling to keep them interested. For some it will be aeros, some touring, some grass strip flying etc. But apart from someone who's passion is aeros (which one can do quite happily forever in the UK) everyone else will increase their enjoyment of flying greatly if they can leave the country. The ability to travel abroad is one of the great freedoms of flying.
[QUOTE]IOS54,what a load of rubbish.
I don't know how many hours you have but I have pals with 1000's of PPL hours and they enjoy flying interesting planes in interesting company in the UK.
There are some absolutely stunning places to fly to and around in the UK.
QUOTE]
Lister Noble,
I don't mean to be patronising; please forgive me if this sounds so. But your profile says that you are just learning to fly at present. I agree that there are lots of interesting places to fly in the UK, but wait until you have 150hours, then think about it again. You will realise by then, that you've seen ever where you want to see that is within 1.5 hours flying time. When you start to think about going somewhere a bit further, you may very well decide that where you'd most like to go is only 2.5 hours away, but is in a different country. You might form a different opinion then.
dp