Anyone here want to weigh in on the value of a private pilot license?
You take on an entirely different relationship with the weather.
Flying into expected congestion beats driving any time. I really enjoy flying to college football games, where just getting out of town afterward may take 90 minutes or more and then the rest of the trip home.
It creates flexibility and opens up options that road travel does not. I can get to the beach in two hours from where I live, making a day trip for fresh seafood doable. My son was in Auburn last year for the Tennessee game. Another couple flew down with me; we picked him up in Auburn and thence headed to Tuscaloosa. He got to watch four SEC teams play each other live in the same day.
Charities Pilots N Paws and Angel Flight transport rescue animals to their forever homes and vulnerable medical patients to and from treatments.
Fewer interactions with TSA creeps.
Maintaining my required medical certificate and protecting my investment in flight training creates a strong incentive to stay healthy. I’m in my best shape in decades. Of course it’s possible to find overweight pilots.
If you intend to fly to any sort of scheduled event, strongly consider adding an instrument rating, which will make you a much safer, more precise pilot and should increase your likelihood of surviving inadvertent flight into IMC.
It’s a rewarding intellectual and physical challenge. Phil Greenspun posits[0] that it keeps the mind active and young longer.
If you go to the local general aviation airport, you'll find lots of guys in their 60s and 70s who are tackling challenges that are way beyond your own capabilities. Certainly these guys are much sharper and in better mental and physical shape than the average person of their age. Flying requires mental acuity and real-time decision-making that seems to keep pilots young. A lot of older folks seem to be preoccupied with trivial matters, such as organizing their junk mail or minutia within their childrens' lives. Old pilots don't seem to be subject to these preoccupations and the topics of their conversations have more in common with young pilots than with other old people.
[0]: http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/avi...
Insurance may be cost-prohibitive for a brand new private pilot. For your first couple hundred hours, renting will likely be the better option. Airplanes rent by the Hobbs meter hour, or time the engine is running. “Wet” rentals, which means fuel included, is a common arrangement as well. A club I belong to reimburses us at the wholesale rate for fuel purchased at other airports. For overnight rentals, some places have a minimum number of hours per day that they charge because the airplane isn’t generating any revenue sitting on the ground.
As a student pilot in the US you can fly without a passenger but also with other restrictions like your flight instructor has to give you an endorsement to fly and most won't give you an unrestricted endorsement. It is really there to get you a certificate and not as a way to bypass it. All other require a certificate (technically it is not a license but rather a pilot certificate). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_certification_in_the_Uni...
"For example, the assumption can be made that a person who elects, without pilot qualifications, to operate an uncertificated vehicle alone is fully aware of the risks involved. This assumption does not hold true of a passenger selected randomly from the general public. Persons in the general public will likely assume that the operator has certificated pilot qualifications."
Also, not all airports allow ultralight operations.
https://www.usua.org/Rules/faa103.htm
Also, for insurance and legal reasons, no professional CFI is going to endorse you as a student pilot on an on-going basis.
Agreed about the student pilot not getting an endorsement on an on-going basis. It's too much of a risk to them.
1) Passengers are assumed, correctly, that they cannot evaluate the risks of a flight, and FAA regulations must protect them.
That's why you won't see passenger drone flights in this century in the US, or any advertised "ride sharing" between strangers.
(The FAA has been slow on banning helicopter skid pop-out floats for sightseeing flights, but I predict that will change.)
2) That VFR and IFR flights must be physically separated.
That's why everything that moves will be required to have ADS-B out.
If you're involved in any kind of business model that opposes the above, it is only a matter of time until the FAA stops you. You're welcome to use the words "doctrine" or "never" when explaining the above.
- you plan a long-term commitment to flying, and more ratings later
- you live near an airport, or can trailer in an airplane
- you make a good salary for your region (or live at home)
- you're healthy (can pass a required FAA airman exam)
- you plan to fly at least once or twice a month for airplanes, twice per month for helicopters
Don't get a PPL if:
- you want to travel and can't afford a fast-enough airplane
- it's an expensive bucket list item to cross off, then forget
- you have severe ADHD, dyslexia or problems reading
- you have a DUI or seizures (disallowed), diabetes, apnea or cardiac problems (on-going special issuance paperwork.)
- you care about family approval, but your partner is afraid for your safety
- you don't like rules (FAA, flight schools and clubs have tons of rules and regulations)
- want to make money flying (you need a commercial+ rating to charge money)
Note that after you get your PPL, you will have a baseline of skills that lets you fly safely under cheaper, less-regulated rules, like ultralight, experimental and LSA.
For example, for safe, low-cost long-term flying, a PPL followed by purchase of a Hummel all-metal ultralight trailerable airplane (~$30k) would be ideal for local VFR flight for one person.
Source: commercially-rated pilot.
(Funny side effects: There are plenty of pilots who are pretty certain they have ADHD, but since getting the license was expensive, and this is now their job, they won't seek diagnosis)
Other things that make you skip PPL: Color blindness. Again, endless hoops needed. Night flights are out even if you get the exception.
In general, get the medical cert out the way first if you care about PPL. Be prepared to spend good chunks of money if you're anywhere around SV. PAO especially is a hideously expensive place to learn flying.
Edit: I'd also suggest avoiding becoming a pilot if you're adverse to turbulence or sweat, as not many light aircraft have ACs.
If you want to carry passengers, especially on scheduled flights, then it gets complicated as you're really starting an airline as far as the FAA sees it.
2) You can fly in the early morning if you're new to turbulence.
I got most of my ratings in Hawaii, and we'd tell new students to show up at 8 am or 9 am if that was an issue for the first couple of flights.
On 2), my experience has been that most students get airsick because of anxiety (I guess it is associated with them fixing their gaze inside the airplane) and is usually not an issue once they gain confidence. Before that, flying early is great advice.
So it may cost you more or take you longer. If you are truly interested, you keep with it, or decide to stop.
However, if you do a bunch of research it may be right for you even though it usually isn't for anybody else.
For example, if I was a CFI and had a partner who flew with me, and who wanted a rating and refused to spend serious money, I might tell them to do a Sport and endorse it. But from this example you can see how super-narrow the use cases can be.
Or if you own a Japanese flight school in Hawaii, and get 20 candidates per month who are doing hobby-only flying, then maybe that business model works for everybody. (This is based on a real situation. PPLs were granted to students who could not speak English on the radio, so the FAA stopped that.)
For a broad reference, see the Airplane Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) database on health conditions that may affect medical certification.
https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/medical-resources/health-conditi...
But if you're not a paid pilot, you're better off not going down that route, since once you're on record as having a deficiency, that's a permanent concern to the FAA. And if they decline the special issuance, you're also not eligible for the drivers license medical.
I would advise nobody with issues who wants to fly for hobby reasons to go down the PPL route since you can get banned for failng a medical. There's almost no upside and huge downside to risking that.
I did witness an AME re-approve a commercial guy with a DUI though while in the waiting room. Good on you, FAA.
Thanks for the DUI anecdote. Great that he got re-approved, but that can be retracted anytime.
Just to recap - the FAA assumes if you get an airman medical, you might try to carry passengers, so their medical rules are maximally strict.
The 2 better options are:
1) Do some research on Sport Pilot and LSA planes. No FAA medical or PPL required, just a valid drivers license.
2) Get involved in the ultralight community, ask around about training, and buy a Hummel. No FAA medical or license required, but I'd recommend doing PPL-level training for safety reasons.
Just for those reading along: all FAA licenses require demonstrating mastery of the aircraft to certain tolerances. PPL has pretty basic requirements that get you from Point A to Point B, but no acro or IFR, so it doesn't make you an ace. But a PPL is still a world away from an untrained ultralight pilot.
Correct, but you need a PP to get the CPL (which only allows you to basically fly the same plane you did your PP on, just for money). Then there's IFR training, ATPL, AMEL, and that's only to get you at the door of a major company
(Just adding a bit of detail to the story)