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

The school I am most familer with the profit margin is the same on self fly hire as dual.

The student pays 100 quid for an hour in theCessna 150 to the school. If they need an instructor then they pay the instructor directly.

This school is also more than happy (if booked in advance and you don’t take the piss) for people to take the aircraft away for weekends and there is no minimum hire fee per day. Hence numerous times their aircraft have gone to various airshows.

To the question about flying abroad it doesn’t happen where I am bases largely because of the distance involved. The bill bill would be cica 700 quid. However people have taken it to the isle of Mann.

The school also encourages people to get there own aircraft and in fact approx 20% of the hours flown are on owners aircraft off which the school gets zero income.

Back to the original question you can either use your own financial means to meet those goals but if its your thing I would suggest getting an instructor rating.

To start off with you will be given pretty mondane (but very important) task s such as trial lessons. Over time this will build you will get to know all the local airfields very well and also all the people at all the airfields very well. You will also get to know all the maintenance people. These connections will the open further doors.

Certainly where I fly from one on the instructors flies a cirrus and a pc12 on a part time basis on the back of this. Another a C208 paradropping. Another a pa32 for a private owner who uses it for business and doesn’t have a licence.

I’m not saying its for everyone but you have to make yourself usefull and have skills people need and will pay for instructing is one such way of getting this.

Flyer59 wrote:

you can’t wash yourself without getting wet. Sooner or later you simply have to DO things.

This comment is most true. However, where we speak about ‘transport’ flights (i.e. going somewhere with a purpose), one must remember this will usually cost +€1,000 + require several days access to the aircraft. You need the means & some form of ownership to do this as a matter of course, rather than an annual adventure. Clubs are fantastic – but they are for local flying with an exceptionally trip afar.

As far as annual adventures from a club, they can be shared with other members to make them more realistic/enjoyable but this is a different subject matter to dropping down to La Rochelle every few weeks…

The school also encourages people to get there own aircraft and in fact approx 20% of the hours flown are on owners aircraft off which the school gets zero income.

That is really admirable.

My view has always been that if you mix experienced pilots with students, and swallow the likely apparent reduction in the authority of the instructors, everybody benefits. The instructors get students who can see the way forward beyond their next lesson and the much more rewarding stuff that lies ahead. I found this to a hugely obvious degree when taking up PPL students.

I think maybe the areas which are the tightest and most against this sort of thing are those where a lot of schools have set up. For example at Shoreham, 2000/2001, there were seven fixed wing schools, so they were constantly eating each others’ lunch. If you have a place where only one school is allowed to set up, they can afford to be more generous.

Vladimir,

once I am back from Bulgaria, let’s sit together finally. I think I can address some of the issues you are talking about and I think I also know where you can find an IFR airplane which you can rent over longer times with no availability problems

Re eastern Europe, I think I said it before but in my experience with flights in the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria these countries are the closest to aviation heaven in Europe. I much prefer flying in these areas than in the airspace mazes some of the western European countries display. Even though there are a lot of airspaces there as well, the actual flying is really very easy.

What your posts show as well is that there is a distinct lack of training in certain fields in our average flight schools. Coming out of training like you do with the amount of hours you have and being concerned about doing trips means that there is something important missing in our training. And I wonder how that can be adequately addressed in a non legal way, that is without additional “rules” but with certain incentives to do some training for international flying in a non formal manner so that people can get their first experiences in a “protected” way.

Anyway, I’ll call you once I am back end of next week.

My club has regular “Fly in Italy” or “Fly in Germany” or “Fly in France” get-togethers, and a long international trip is also part of the member check-out. If Urs allows I’m going to hop over to sit with you guys on this (and i owe him beers anyway so he can’t say no :) ).

A school has to aim for a high utilisation to get the money back.

A rental outfit also needs customers in the first place.

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.

This would definitely not happen here – neither at the school that I rent from nor at the club.

The school has a 2h/day policy, but I would discuss it with them before a flight. If I didn’t, they might bill some more, but more likely, I’d get a telling-off to discuss my flight plans (in terms of days away and hours flown) with them beforehand. The school understands that if they don’t allow trips, they wouldn’t have many charter customers in the first place, I would say.

It’s even more like that at the club. Everyone there seems to love trips, that’s why everyone is invested in the club anyway. Obviously, you DO need to weigh aircraft utilization against the benefit of an individual, but there usually are compromises – and I’m obviously not talking about renting for a month and flying an hour only. But a long weekend and three hours total, or 10 days (1 week including both weekends) and, say, 8 hours have been fine (like when we met in Lausanne).

mh wrote:

There is much more to aviation than just personal transport fom A to B and many people are quite happy in different clubs. They can enjoy a variety of aircraft and different air sports and different kind of flying, from the glider to microlights to cessnas. Some find fulfilment in instrucing, others in aerobatics, the next is very happy with the normal 100$ Hamburger run and, yes, some people like to travel.

+1

There is a KLM captain who comes to our club each summer. He rents our 48 model Army Cub for a week or so and travel to each and every small strip he can find in the vicinity, radius of 100 NM or so. More like bush flying than anything else. I mean, when he (several thousand hour airline captain) finds great fun in doing that, why shouldn’t we?

If the goal is to travel from A to B for several hours, then you also need higher comfort, speed and equipment than the average aircraft has. The complexity increases many folds for the sole reason of making it better to sit still while the airplane flies straight and level. For some this is what flying is all about, it gives flying a “purpose” of some kind. But I think for most recreational pilots, flying itself is purpose enough, and more “advanced” means things like acro, bush, gliding, microlights, aerial work and so on. Things that sharpens and widens the basic stick and rudder “competence”.

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.

That does not make sense. That would cover expenses that the flying club did not incur, like gas and maintenance (variable expenses).

I do find it understandable that the flying club has some kind of scheme which encourages a minimum use of an aircraft, ie. prevents pilots from leaving an aircraft unused for an extended period of time and thus making it unavailable for others. In most aeroclubs availability of aircraft is a concern especially during summer weekends. In smaller aeroclubs members may be responsible enough not to take an airplane say from Lille to L2K for a seaside weekend and bring it back with less than two hours flown, but the bigger aeroclubs tend to be a lot more impersonal and de facto function as rental agencies. The members will treat it as such with no regards for others.

Personally I have never had any problems to book and use aeroclub aircraft for traveling for one or two weeks. The problem was booking long enough in advance so that you could have the aircraft over a week-end. During week-days availability was seldom an issue.

It sounds like 2h/day billing is not unusual…

They do here as well, however it costs 5000-6000 CHF per person (flight time + instructor), not counting hotels and food. It is difficult to afford it.

The schools I was in down here (I was at 3 in total) used to do French trips, but every leg had an instructor in the RHS so every leg was billed at the rental+instructor rate. Also, having an instructor in every plane was done to prevent somebody getting nervous re the return flight (over weather, or the planes were old wrecks and sometimes made strange noises) and leaving the thing out there and flying back on Ryanair and leaving the school with the considerable job of retrieving the plane This is what one instructor told me; I am not making it up And I can 100% understand it.

Once you run a business, you have to run it as a business, not as a charity. Especially when you have 7 other outfits trying to eat your lunch. GA training can become a “race to the bottom” because there will always be one school owner with a C150 who is happy to turn up at 8am and sit there till 8pm even in OVC002 just in case the phone rings, and without paying himself a salary. Thankfully, most of those 8 schools eventually went bust, but the rules on taking a plane away have not changed. You can do a 1- or 2- trip into France.