Desk-Pilot interesting concept. However here's a couple of thoughts (IMHO) that you may like to be aware of - of course I may just be mucking things up;
1. A company cannot off-set against VAT unless it is VAT registered. VAT registration is only applicable when the company reaches an income threshold (£44Kish?), and cannot be applied retrospectively and therefore all VAT incurred on training whilst the companies income is below the threshold cannot be applied.
2. If you were going to try and use your first income as company income (effectively pay yourself to fly) then be careful that the income is not taxed twice (once as PAYE and once as profit in a company). You can lend the company the money but that doesn't count as income - and you've paid tax on it already and you might wander into a capital gains problem in the future.
3. The inland revenue take a very dim view of one man bands being set up for tax purposes. If you come to their attention in this way they are likely to review your last 7 years earning in their favour. I've been PAYE for the last 5 years - and each time I complete a return I owe them another £500 - go figure
4. The only way I could actually see this working would be to use the company as a legal vehicle to reduce some of the incurred costs. For instance - if you created a "training group" with a C152 (e.g.) as it main asset and sold shares to a number of like minded training PPL(a) stude types - then you could reduce your costs - which is after all what you really want to achieve. You'd have to contract with a local school for an FI but you could try and off-set some of the cost by allowing the school to use the airframe when your "group" don't want it.
The only problem with option 4 - would be the high insurance and liability costs incurred. Also one plane operations suffer severely if the asset gets broke.
An interesting option however
