Got the license, how to build up experience and confidence?

What kind of company is this? Is it an airline or something smaller?

It’s an operator of a fleet of business jets.

Do you have an idea where to look for possible open positions like that?

The best way to get into the business flying sector is by personal contacts. Flying instructors or former students of your flying school who work in this sector are usually the first who know about new opportunities. Many jobs are not even advertised!

I think Vladimir you do need to be fairly clear about whether you want to fly privately, or go for an airline or bizjet job. In Europe those are about the main options. The reason is that the commercial stuff will take a lot of time and dedication to achieve (I know a good number who have done it – both airline and bizjet) and time is not on your side against the flood of 20+ year olds with big dreams, usually big funding, who are pouring out of the ATPL-FTO sausage machine. And IF you want to fly commercially then my feeling is that at your age and with your mental approach the bizjet scene will be much more interesting than the airlines. As what_next indicates you can do that quite part-time and have time with your family or whatever, and an interesting life is surely what we all want. You have plenty of options for just earning money…

If you want to do private flying then a syndicate or outright ownership is virtually a must. There are some rare exceptions. There are aircraft owners who don’t fly anymore, or fly very rarely, but don’t want to sell up, or they are running the operation as a tax loss vehicle, so they rent their plane out on a long term basis, often at good rates. You would be surprised at the number of pilots who fly all over the place and talk about “their” plane but who are in fact renting! There was a PA46 going at EGMD for £200/hr wet! Shagged, yes, but very capable. Try making some discreet enquiries around your area… Then there have been hour-block-purchase “time share” schemes (notably around some SR22s here in the UK) but they collapsed as soon as the economy got a bit tight, and they were never much good for “holiday” use due to an eye-watering effective hourly rate (it had to be high because somebody was running it as a business, and had to cover stuff like clumsy pilots doing damage).

Then, private flight around Europe is not hard. The flying is of course flying like any other. There are some aspects of weather appreciation which are much more tricky than if you were flying a de-iced turboprop or a jet with radar, but they are easy enough. I try to document these in my trip writeups.

One can do that with fairly clear go/no-go rules; I would never suggest one should at a certain point throw away one’s caution and just go because (as they say in England) you live only once – that is a 100% sure way to get killed on the Nth such flight where N is going to be some not very big positive integer Always have a Plan B; always have a way out.

There is rather a lot of “operational” stuff but it is mostly ground based junk much of which is Europe-specific. This puts a lot of people off flying seriously but it is actually simple stuff. I started writing down some tips a while ago, here. I think this aspect of GA is getting easier over time, due to how much one can do over the internet. Especially for IFR.

To lose your license you would need to do something pretty amazing and stick your middle finger up to the CAA going after you. The worst known things are busting a French nuclear power station zone (should never happen under IFR) or busting some air show or similar prohibited zone, and AFAIK nobody lost their license even for that. You can read the UK list and I doubt you will find anybody who actually lost their license (short of really sticking a finger up).

Oxygen is trivial. The system is very simple. A lot of pilots don’t like it, and there are real potential issues with small children at high altitudes, or passengers with respiratory difficulties. But otherwise it’s one of the simplest things in flying, and it enhances mission capability massively.

If you land a flying job, all of the points on your list will be part of your “on the job training”, I suppose (unless you intend to fly as an ag or tow pilot or something like that).

For personal flying qualities, you could just buy a small tail dragger for not much money and travel with that bird. Something like this springs to mind. This little bird will teach you more about flying than any P28A can ever do.

Then, if you are a bit more experienced, you can become flight instructor. There is sure a need of capable and dedicated flight instructors (and there is enough work to do for instructors, our small aero club flight school has constantly about 10-15 students, without any advertising. That is as much as we can handle with us few instructors. Our neighbouring aero club did one advertising campaign and did acquire 10 students at once.) Good instructors are worth their money.

Don’t fill it with air :-)

Well, as we say here, you can’t wash yourself without getting wet. Sooner or later you simply have to DO things. And you don’t have to climb to FL200 to test your new oxygen system. I first tried mine in FL120 before i flew higher.

The MH O2D2 system can be (and is, preflight) tested on the ground. You just get quite short pulses of the gas

In short, IMHO the best system to get is really simple: the MH 48 cu ft composite cylinder, the MH 1st stage reg, the MH O2D2 electronic demand reg… the last pic at the end of here

I see from all your comments that flying more is best done by getting a (partial) ownership of a plane

There is a bias towards that opinion on EuroGA – that is probably based on the ratio of owners/(ex) partial owners here vs. renters and those will have, at some point in their flying career, made a willful decision to give up chartering/renting/club life in favor of their own airplane or share – probably for reasons such as:

The problem is renting is the club will never give me the plane for a week if I only fly several hours.

Now, let me be the voice that disagrees. I’d dispute that generally, “flying more is best done by getting a (partial) ownership of a plane”.

I’d say it depends on your personal situation and the options available both in terms of renting and (co-)owning. I for once have found the ideal club for me (based on a tip received from a euroga member). It’s a little further out than my previous “home” airfield where I chartered and where an aircraft that i OWNED would be based, but for me the deal works well. The rates are competitive, maintenance is good and taking the plane for any tour that I have endeavored so far hasn’t been a problem (such as this entire week right now). Additionally, although I never wanted “club life” (it’s not my thing, really), I’ve found that hanging around at the club restaurant/bar and sharing ideas with people there is also quite nice. And in fact, recently I went flying with an owner who shares the airplane (a Katana) with one other co-owner and whose calculated hourly rate is the same as the rental rate at my club for a PA28 and he is very seriously considering getting rid of the Katana and the financial risks associated with it in favor of a rental/club scheme again.

I’ve not come across a rational argument for ownership that works for me – the emotional aspect aside, of course. If you want to own an airplane, go buy one. If you want to find economical ways of flying, weigh your options and decide wisely.

I’ve heard VFR, especially in Eastern Europe, is very different.

Vladimir, I have a lot of respect for the licenses and ratings you acquired and you have about twice as many hours in your book as I have. That makes you in many ways probably a better, certainly a more educated pilot. I’m flying around with a plain PPL SEP – but the first longer trip I did was to Eastern Europe (after getting very useful advice on this very forum, obviously) and I second what everyone else on the thread has been saying: Just go and do it! I went through Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia and it all went very well – the flying is the same anyway and ATC support was very friendly, professional and helpful at all times. I suspect there are countries that aren’t that “far” yet but I think this is all changing rapidly… In any case, this is all a big adventure and you’re not going to die or loose your license if something minor goes wrong – it will just make you grow as a pilot. In fact, I don’t even regret that many of those things aren’t taught formally in PPL training etc – it would at some point take away the element of adventure and exploration from this whole thing, wouldn’t it…

There certainly are schools with a DA40/42 fleet which they rent out, and the package is probably OK for a 2- or 3-day trip provided that you do quite a lot of flying, but if they let you take it away for say 1 week, and you do only two 3hr flights during that week, they leave themselves open to abuse.

When I used to rent out my TB20, 2002-2006, I did allow people to do that, but the magnitude of totally-in-your-face p1sstaking I got from some customers (fake IRs, messing with the fuel totaliser to reduce the fuel invoice, pocketing the duty drawback, etc) meant that nobody actually got the opportunity. I fly only once a week on average so I would have been OK with it, and had I been renting out today I would have welcomed you as a customer

But that was allowable only because it would have been rare. A school has to aim for a high utilisation to get the money back.

Of course a 2 night trip away still represents great value in flying…

The schools I know about around here would bill you for ~9 hrs wet time which on a nice plane would be about GBP 2000 even if you flew just two 2hr legs.

The SR22 (of the former “147” setups) was about £250/hr plus the hour block, a few years ago. I have just googled for them and surprisingly this site is still up, with this (now at the bottom of the sea) and this which I guess is tongue in cheek. They have an explanation here but I can’t see any pricing.

Oxygen is trivial.
Easy for you to say But just imagine getting the system, finding good components, finding a place to refill the air and flying for the first time at FL200 without knowing if it works or not and all that without any experience and without anyone having shown you how to do it

A year ago I didn’t have it, read a lot on the internet came to the conclusion to use a MH system, I have a portable bag (easy to carry and put behind the seat with two smaller bottles in a pack. Read the manual. Switch it on at home. First flight use it below FL140 to check. Buy a pulse oxymeter and off you go… .
One item which often is not mentioned O2 bottles with DIN447 outlet are mostly now with a risidual valve off 3 BAR to avoid completely empty bottles and potential corrosion etc..When you want to fill up you will need a special adapter piece to open the check valve while filling with a DIN447 adapter….Apparently this is a new regulation for O2 bottles since 2013…
I always take it with me and use it above FL100