Originally Posted by
xrayalpha
Your choices of schools are:
ACS (Leading Edge) at Cumbernauld, Glasgow or Perth
Tayside at Glenrothes and Dundee
Edinburgh Flying Club
Border Air Training at Cumbernauld
and, possibly (the wild card!) ourselves at Strathaven.
Things to look at are :
Location: how far to travel (petrol can cost 20p a mile), weather (some people say the East Coast has better weather, but it can also get fogged in with easterly winds) and how busy the airfield is (you cannot do circuits - ie learning take-off and landing - at Edinburgh, I understand, so have to fly to Fife for that.)
Aircraft: which types - some like high wing, some prefer low wing, their condition etc
Instructors: how often are they there. Will you have the same one right though training, or will you get passed from one to another or is "your" instructor only available on odd days.
Fellow students/pilots: you can learn a bit from being with them.
Cost: To exaggerate, three hours with an instructor at £100 per hour is obviously worse value than one £250 an hour with an instructor who can teach you the same skills in 60 minutes. So lesson cost is not everything. And beware of other fees like "club membership", "landing fees" and what insurance is offered if you have an accident.
Thank you for the information. I'm now leaning away from Tayside on distance but will consider all of the other points you mentioned.
Originally Posted by
xrayalpha
You mention flying as a hobby. If you do not really want to become a commercial pilot at the moment, it might be worth popping down to see us at Strathaven and having a shot in our C42 "microlight". The C42 is a modern German-built light aircraft that can just squeeze into the microlight category (by 500 grams!).
Quite a few of our folk have got their microlight licence and then spent three hours upgrading to an NPPL for light aircraft. And for the next year and a half, or so, there is a very clear route from microlight to the new European Light Aircraft Pilots Licence and then on to the EASA SEP.
My dream is to be a commercial pilot, so when faced with similar options I'd rather take the path that increases those chances if I decide to go for it in the future, which is why I was focussed on the EASA PPL (I think?) Honestly, I'm still getting my head round all of the options that are available, between NPPL, PPL, LAPL it's all rather confusing at the moment so I'm trying to research as much as possible.
I'd rather stick with whatever gives me the most flexibility in the future.