Quick and cheap private licence?
 

Hi all,

Can anyone recommend a school (in the US?) where my wife could get a Private licence quickly and cheaply. I'd actually prefer her to have an FAA licence. The plan is for the rest of the family to have a holiday while she's flying.

Thanks.

Quickly and cheaply?

I prefer never to use those words when it comes to learning to fly.

How about safely and competently?

Quickly.... TSA? Visa?

California Flight Academy may be able to help.

Heard from the public side of the aircraft rental counter:

"Hi! I just got my ", I'd like to rent an aircraft please....

Boy Wonder (and I do....) please take a differnet approach. For many of us here, aviation is our livelyhood, and our pride. There's nothing quick or cheap about how we do it! We do an honest job, and expect honest pay - don't ask for less.

And what is your wfe's opinion ?

A few related thoughts
 

In the interests of progressing the discussion, I’d like to interpret your question as seeking good instruction to achieve a licence as relatively quickly and inexpensively as possible. The two are interconnected, as a well structured and presented course will reduce the time that you as a family need to spend there.

I recall speaking to one lady some time ago who had completed the PPL from scratch (i.e. not even opened the books before she went) in three weeks. It is possible but won’t be an exactly restful holiday for your wife, nor perhaps for you.

Your wife may have the advantage of some flying experience with you, so hopefully she has picked up some useful stuff. The people who tend to get through the course in the minimum time usually have previous experience, like Air Training Corps, University Air Squadron, gliding etc. That said, it’s easy for someone to pick up bad habits when flying with another pilot who isn’t an instructor. I bought some lessons as a birthday present for a friend who flew extensively with me, as I was worried that she was picking up some of my bad habits. Thankfully she’s gone on to be a much better pilot than I am.

Much will depend on why your wife wants to learn to fly. Is she going to go off on her own, or always with you / the family? If it’s the latter she will need the practical skills to fly and navigate. If it’s the former, she will need the piece of paper as well. This rather tangential view is about what happens at the end of your holiday if for reasons of weather or other factors, she hasn’t been able to achieve the check ride / licence.

I can’t offer any advice on the specific schools, as the one I used for the FAA/IR thirteen years ago has sunk without trace.

Safe Flying,
Richard W.

There is nothing wrong with asking for quick and cheap! How do we know this chap's wife is not a 'natural'? A lot of my training has been quick and cheap and as I was careful to monitor quality, the low cost (cheapness) was not an issue.

Lets not show these potential new recruits that we're a bunch of exclusive up our own arses closed shopkeepers and actually welcome them with some helpful advice and encouragement.

Price-wise its generally all much cheaper in the States. If she takes the ground exams before she goes out there then she'll stand a chance of completing the license in 1 month. Also, have her take a lesson or two back here before she goes as you'll need to have some idea of her level of aptitude before you commit to a time scale.

As for license, many of the schools will generally help you get both FAA and JAR(European) at the same time at very little extra cost. Whereever you live, she'll need access to aircraft she can fly in order to keep her license and stay safe and although you can fly in the UK on an FAA license, I believe you need to be flying a US registered aircraft.

Probably a better way would be to do the UK NPPL over here. Its cheaper than the JAR PPL (£3-4K vs £6-8k) and you can use it over here immediately. Also, I believe there is or will soon be a 'Sport Pilot' license in the US that is equivalent and should be easy to achieve should you want to fly in America.

Not the best way to word your question, hence the rather hostile replies. But really what do you want quick or cheap ? Because they are mutually exclusive.

If you specify "quickly", the cost part becomes meaningless because to get a license quickly you need a school with:

- a location with consistantly great weather
- lots of aircraft so if yours breaks there is a spare immediately available
- lots of instructors teaching to a standardized sylabus because to progress at the fastest possible pace you will need more than one instructor
- organized and complete ground training facilities and program
- on sight examiner

The there only a few schools in the USA that meet these requirements and they are all the big name airline prep schools.... and you must understand this will be no holiday. It is 12 hr days 7 days a week for a the minmum a whole month.

If you want "cheap", than go to a mom and pop low overhead operation, but be prepared to wait when the aircraft goes unservicable, is away on a rental flight, the instructor takes days off, the examiner is not available, etc etc.

Agreed... But maybe the helpful advice is that with a PPL from a quick and cheap training organization, you may not have what you think you have (if you even finish your training before some financial woes befall them). If aircraft renters and insurers won't take your new license seriously, it'll cost you more in the long run, to get the addtional training to get you where you could have been done right the first time.

Disagreed, it's just plain insulting to the service provider and his peers. It suggests that you think that they are not entitled to be fairly paid for the service they provide. If you choose to learn to fly in "Cheap" poorly maintained aircraft, that's your choice, but you have no right to complain about "spam cans" later. If you choose to receive training "quickly", and perhaps are not thorough, with the background information not well understood, you could become one of the persons who are spoken of poorly because of a poor demonstration of flying skills

Would it not be necessary to have a good grasp of the elements of high quality training (meaning you'd already received quite a lot of it) to be able to monitor training you are, yourself, receiving? Self audit for quality is a demanding exercise...

I hope that that original poster's wife finds a economy oriented training organization, and is appropriately thorough in learning to fly. I'm happy to share the sky with pilots whose approach is to do things properly, and apply the resources necessary to be airborne as safely as practical.

NPPL
 

I would be very interested to know how many pilots complete the NPPL course successfully in 35 hours?

Not very many I would guess,because basically the syllabus is the same for NPPL and PPL,apart from the Navigation exercises.
Lister:)

Pilot DAR, cheapness (taken to mean low cost in this instance) is not mutally exclusive with quality. Indeed, during my time at Farnborough on my aerospace course it was hammered in to me that cost is as much a factor in assessing the quality of a product as anything else. A titanium washer may make a fantastic aerospace standard part but when maintenance organisations have to pay £6 for it vs £1 for a certified steel equivalent, the maintenance organisation will quite rightly have cost as a quality criteria. The less expensive washer is higher quality because it does the job at 17% of the cost and 95% of the performance of the more expensive one.

We must get over the cheap=poor quality rather than low cost thing.

Asking for less expensive instruction does not devalue the service instructors provide. They are a professional and highly trained bunch of people, who are poorly paid for their efforts. Clearly, ours is an expensive hobby, but asking for a cheap way in shows no disrespect for these people. There are cheaper ways of flying versus the more expensive ways, and if these cheaper ways are still too much then either the punter can't afford it or the training organisations must find a better business model.

This is all said with the greatest of respect to PilotDAR and I am keen to avoid a classic pprune spat.

Indeed, I agree.

Everything in balance. For those who might need a little guidance in balancing, we will assist where we can, without purposefully demeaning...

How much is the life insurance worth?;)

Rod1

@Fleetflyer: I will agree that cost of acquisition is one valid criterium (sp?) when shopping. But a person who makes "quick" and "cheap" the ONLY criteria carries some potential for danger - which was duly adressed.

Isn't there an engineering proverb about this?
Good, cheap and quick are all possible.
Choose which two you want...:ugh:

And I have to disagree with you there, Pilot DAR.

There's nothing holy about flying. If I say I want a quick and cheap legal service (some hopes to either!) the lawyers might get a bit sniffy, but it's a reasonable thing to ask. Ditto for car repair, builders, restaurant... Provided a service provider meets legal requirements (including safety), then if they can also be quick and cheap then they're likely to be successful in the market. And smile at the ones feeling insulted.

Do you mean to you our your widow?:hmm:

Quick. Cheap. Good.


Choose any 2.

Thank you, Adlib. That is always true.

Perhaps market forces don't apply in aviation, but thank goodness they do in almost every other walk of life, or I'd spend much more on everything I buy.