My story
First of all, apologies for my spelling mistakes, I am not the brightest guy in the world.
I left school at 16 with poor CSE results. Got a CSE grade 3 in math's
My dream at that time was to be a long distance lorry driver.
At 17, I got a job driving a van. At 19 I got a job at a haulage company driving 7 and a half tonne trucks which you can do on a car driving licence.
At 21, I got my HGV licence and that was the beginning of 10 years as a truck driver. I drove tankers for 6 years carrying chemical waste and also drove for 3 years for Eddie Stobart Ltd.
When I was 18, I use to go to Manchester Airport looking at the planes and never in a million years did I think I would one day be a pilot.
When I was 30, I began to get fed up with being a truck driver and I thought that my next career would be as an aircraft refueller. I applied to Esso, Shell and BP at Manchester Airport and was lucky enough to get a job with Shell starting on May 13th 1998.
6 months after starting this job and getting to know a few pilots, I realised that to be a pilot, you did not have to be anything special with regards intelligence. It was then that the dream to be a pilot was born.
I did my PPL at Welshpool in Aug-Sept 1999. I did a 4 week intense course which was not enough time. I ended up being 3 hours short and had to go back to Welshpool for 2 days to finish it off in Oct 1999. I did my PPL in 45 hours.
In Jan 2000, I bought a share of a Cessna 150 G-BBKY for £1300 which was based at Barton and my idea was to tell as many people as poss that I was looking for anyone interested in flying to come with me and share the cost. I use to get billed £35 a month even if I did not fly it and then get charged £35 an hour to fly it. I use to take people up for an hour, show them how to fly it and let them have a go at the controls. I would ask them for half the cost. I was happy as I was getting hours in my log book and they were having an hour’s flying cheap.
I sold my share of this plane in August 2008 for £1600 and had logged 400 hours in it in 6 years
Welcome to the G-BBKY web site
Gallery
I did this for the next 5 years helping me build the hours I needed for starting my CPL course. Your need 150 hours total before you can start a CPL course.
Also before you start a CPL course, you need to have passed 14 ATPL exams. To do this I started a correspondence course with Bristol Ground School. This correspondence course took me 3 years to complete as I was still working full time at Shell whilst I was doing it. It was very hard for me.
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When I had passed all those exams, it was then Sept 2005.
I then did my 5 hour night rating course at Ravenair at Liverpool.
I then did my 28 hour CPL and 55 IR courses at Ravenair, Liverpool.
Ravenair Air Charter and Flying Training
Ravenair Flying Training
I then did an MCC course at The flight Centre at Wolverhampton.
The Flight Centre at Halfpenny Green : Private Pilot Training PPL : Commercial Pilot
That was it, all completed after 6 years of hard part time work, I had a Commercial Pilots Licence.
I then carried on as a refueller for Shell whilst I looked for a job.
It took 18 months to get a job and was in fact offered 2 at once. One with BMI Regional on their Embrear 145's and also one with Thomsonfly on their Boeing 737's. It was a no brainer.
I joined Thomsonfly as my first job aged 39, moduler and with only 440 hours.
You don’t need math’s to be a pilot, you just need determination and a will to make your own luck in this world.
http://www.pprune.org/3821823-post640.html
PM me if you like and you can give me a call
Rob