You`ll get a lot of advice on here, not all of it good:confused: Just pick your school to suit you,cost location whatever and then start learning to fly. Make up your own mind once you get started. Enjoy.

Newbie Question
 

I'm also interested in attaining my PPL, but what do you do with it once you have it? can you use it for work? or is there just too much competition?

be a shame to get a PPL then not get a chance to make good use of it.

BAX

prbaxter, you need to do a lot more reading before you start your PPL if this is the kind of questions that need answering.

A PPL is a Private Pilots License. This means you can fly privately but not as a profession. In order to make money from flying, you need a Commercial Pilots License and to improve your abilties, most CPLs actually have an Instrument Rating (IR), Multi-engine rating (ME), Multi-Crew Cooperation rating (MCC) and/or one or more Type Ratings (TR)s. If they also have 1500 hours of experience and done the ATPL theory, that basically means they have an Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL). The investment in an ATPL is approximately 100.000 euros, to give you an idea. A plain CPL is cheaper but you need 250 hours experience as Pilot In Command (PIC) - at aircraft rental rates starting at 140 euros and going well over 200 euros per hour for more complex aircraft you will still be looking at 50.000 euros minimum.

Anyway, as I said, a PPL does not allow you to make money from your flying. You cannot even get reimbursed for your flying costs, except under a few very select cases. Even using the airplane instead of your car or public air transport to get to work, and then letting the company reimburse you for your flying costs has certain rules attached.

Whether there's any money to be made on an ATPL or CPL? Better ask in the Professional Studies/Wannabees forum. Yes, there are jobs and if you land one with an airline it's a rather steady job, albeit with very odd working hours. But the credit crisis is expecting to hit the airlines too so just like after 9/11, we may get into the situation where lots of pilots will get fired with no education whatsoever to pick up any other job.

Backpacker, where do you get this 250 hours PIC for CPL from, it's the second time you have posted it?

JAA CPL is 100 hours PIC, 200 hours TT for license issue.

FAA CPL is 100 hours PIC, 250 hours TT.

Sorry, my mistake. You're right.