Hello to anyone that can help me,
For those wishing to leave a cocky comment due to my lack of inexperience within the flying community please leave now. My background is as follows :-
After joining the army straight from school I always had a passion of wishing to be a pilot but had one holdback, Im color blind.
Despite this I applied to be a pilot in the army but was instantly turned away due to the obvious.
I have now left the army after completing eight and a half years and am working on civvy street in a respectable job in the finance industry and one day came across an article by the FAA. There is now testing for color blind individuals to potentially lead on and become commercial pilots.
The new test being the CAD color test. I applied and fortunately passed despite being slightly color deficient, I can now in the long run potentially be a commercial pilot which like I imagine a number of people here, has been a life long ambition.
So my long term aim is either CPL or ATPL, for which im still trying to come to terms with the difference apart from the CPL not having as many written exams and not as many flying hours and the ATPL for 1500 hours which seems a little unrealisitic at this point so maybe a frozen ATPL ?? You tell me.
So first things first, PPL. I have an idea of cost for all of these courses aswell having looked around but the main thing is getting a good training school. I believe there are 4 in Norwich where I live and all of similar price so which do I choose ??? Do any of you have any personal experience of these bad or good ???
Secondly, im trying to find where the closest school is to complete the ATPL frozen or CPL course (obviously in the long run) as the schools in Norwich dont seem to provide this.
I just wanted to some personal opinions on the four schools at Norwich from people before I go there and speak to them as I know some will be better at selling their services than others, whilst possibly not providing the best service.
The schools in mind are the following :-
Anglian Air Centre
Premier Flight Training Ltd
Sterling Aviation
The Norwich School of Flying
This is not something I can just splash out on straight away and do a fast track course, like most people this will be coming out of my own savings and earnings over the next few years.
Despite in total everything costing in excess of £50k, no guarantees of a commercial airline pilots license at the end and alot of hard work, is there anything else I should know aswell ?
Many thanks for reading, apologies if im rusty on the old terminology as I have noone to speak to apart from a flying school who may try to sell me anything and everything, thanks again and look forwards to your responses!!!