Mentoring

I think if the ‘student’ has the right attitude for future success they will get something from any flight. For instance, even the ‘gain’ by which an experienced pilot reacts and takes controlling action in flight is a lesson in itself. Its not all procedure.

That reminds me of flying with an 88 year old pilot a few years ago. Sadly, by that point this particular guy could get lost overhead the airport but just watching him fly he taught me something about holding altitude on a bumpy day in a very light aircraft . He’d done it for thousands of hours since since the mid-1930s!

Aveling,

very valid points. It is really disappointing how many new PPL’s are giving up flying a short while after they get their license. And the very reason they do so is what you said: Wrong perception about what it really is.

A few points might need expansion.

> It’s unfortunate how the popular perception of having access to a ‘private plane’ differs from the reality here in UK.

Make that Europe vs the US. And yes.

In Europe, “private plane” to the general public is what they see the folks in those daytime TV dokusoaps or the yellow press “prominence” are using, in other words mid size biz jet upwards. When confronted with the reality of a rather tight aircraft with the creature comforts of a Trabant car, most perspective passengers run far and away. Most new PPL’s will find that the number of people who will come to fly with them (despite prior assurances made in the clear belief that this blunderer will never make his license in the first place) will be extremely limited.

Of course flight training in Europe does not help with those things. Learning to fly in an environment where most FI’s have never left their home airfield further away than they have to and have mostly never travelled further than a 100£ hamburger themselves, the focus of PPL training is to get their students through the required steps in a way to get a halfways creadible amount of money and efficiency out of the experience.

The airplane as a means of TRAVEL never even enters the equation. Very simple reasons for that:
- Clubs do not want their pilots to travel. They want them to do their small half day to day trips and then bring the plane home for supper so they can use it for training again the next day.
- Clubs do not want their pilots to own airplanes as they then can’t make any more money of them.
Therefore clubs have NO interest at all to teach their new graduates anything which might help them to spread their wings. They are primarily there to be allowed to rent their airplanes when the school does not need them and bring them back in time for the next lesson.

At the same time, they do paint unrealistic and naive pictures when prospective students turn up for their first lessons. Yea, sure you can travel with your whole family, your golf cart and your baggage in this plane once you are done. Yea, sure, VFR is a great way to go on holidays. Yea, sure, your friends and family will queue up to fly with the heroic new aviator. And so on. And we all know, this is totally unrealistic and wrong.

So what can we tell people who ask US as the people who are actually past the stage of being that new PPL and the initial frustrations and still keep doing it?

First of all, we need to be honest. These people want to know what it really is out there, not some glossy picture by someone who wants to sell them a license. And that reality is very different.

A) Flying private planes can give you a lot of pleasure and a true sense of self achievement. It is one of the greatest possibilities to experience aviation first hand. And it can be a wonderful way to travel if expectations are realistic. And a bloody nightmare if they are not.

B) VFR flying in the airplanes we do our PPL’s in is great for maybe the first year after doing your license in order to get some experience to fly alone and explore your immediate neighbourhood, plus the odd “long distance” flight outside the normal £100 burger range.

It is NOT suitable for travelling in our hemispheres. If you are based south of the Alps and your primary destinations are even further south, this may be different, but for the rest of Europe, travelling with any degree of dispatch reliability requires IFR operation.

C) Do NOT expect any of your friends and familiy to share your enthusiasm and much less to have the confidence in you to actually fly with you. If you look at flying as a means to gain their respect, look elsewhere. Be prepared to be shut up quite undiplomatically or to be left out of invitations and generally avoided if you can not restrain yourselfs talking about flying.

D) In order to travel with any degree of reliability you need an IR and an IFR certified aircraft with at the very least 600 NM range, 17000 ft service ceiling and 150 kts TAS and realistically FIKI certification. And you need a homebase and destinations with IFR facilities as well as at the destination. Most flight schools and clubs do not have such planes and if they do, they need them for training.

E) In order to travel with and degree of reliability, without pressure and with adequate availability, you will need to own your own IFR/FIKI aircraft.

F)No, you don’t need to be a millionaire to own such an airplane in the current market, but you need to know the REAL costs (not some horrorvision spread by envious circuit pilots nor the pink glass visions of aircraft dealers) and then decide if you want to make this huge comitment. It is not necessarily more expensive than other hobbies but it requires a lot of dedication and stamina, as well personal as well as financial in today’s climate.

What can we do to mentor youngsters?

We can be honest with them about what it really takes to do things they think they can do with a PPL.

We can teach them how to travel by plane. Because they do not learn this in PPL school.

We can be the people who appreciate them being pilots and being in aviation, something they won’t experience with their (former) friends and family.

We can show them what we have done by the way of websites like Peter or myself do. I personally found reading about other people’s travel the best motivator for myself.

We can do our very best to set the record straight and to talk reasonably and realistically about what aviation has to offer.

Each of us has to be an ambassador for GA in order to help all of us and those who join us so that we still have a GA to mentor people into in the future.

Though I agree with Mooney’s post to a very large degree, I do not agree with:

> E) In order to travel with and degree of reliability, without pressure and with adequate availability, you will need to own your own IFR/FIKI aircraft.

Sure, it makes long cross country flights more predictable, however…

As one should budget the costs of flying, one must also budget the times. Even like driving, or for that matter walking, there will be times where weather, or another conditions will cause a delay – budget for that, and it will not be a problem. You can spend a large amount of money equipping and maintaining an aircraft to be able to handle condition which you might only fly through a few times a season. If you want to do this, fine, as long as you maintain the commensurate piloting skills.

But, for budgeting an extra day for weather delays for a long trip, the trip can be equally safe and free of pressure. I accept that it might be different in Europe, but I find that in North America, WITH appropriate planning, my trips are interrupted for weather less than 1%, and for maintenance much less than that. I have flown single VFR to every corner of North America, most of which many times. Rarely have I taken a delay, and as often, made better time than I planned.

I was amused at the gasps of amazement when I turned up with my wife in Freeport, Bahamas, in the 150 with a C- on the side, to unload the two bikes and baggage. “You flew all that way in a 150!?!”. Sure, but like a driving trip, we took a few days to do it, and enjoyed ourselves.

The super equipped FIKI IFR touring plane is great. It might save you a day, and keep you on schedule. Hey, the twin will be very reassuring when you want to cross long water at night. But it is costly, and would you land it on the beach along the way? You must choose the plane which will best fly the mission you plan for yourself. The mentoring is to have appropriate expectations of mission capability for the aircraft, but once you have, plan it, and go and fly it!

I’m sorry Urs, but I always seem to disagree with what you post ;-)

Of course flight training in Europe does not help with those things. Learning to fly in an environment where most FI’s have never left their home airfield further away than they have to and have mostly never travelled further than a 100£ hamburger themselves

Hugely exaggerated.

Clubs do not want their pilots to travel. They want them to do their small half day to day trips and then bring the plane home for supper so they can use it for training again the next day. – Clubs do not want their pilots to own airplanes as they then can’t make any more money of them. Therefore clubs have NO interest at all to teach their new graduates anything which might help them to spread their wings. They are primarily there to be allowed to rent their airplanes when the school does not need them and bring them back in time for the next lesson.

Again, a huge generalization.

At the same time, they do paint unrealistic and naive pictures when prospective students turn up for their first lessons. Yea, sure you can travel with your whole family, your golf cart and your baggage in this plane once you are done. Yea, sure, VFR is a great way to go on holidays.

Quite the contrary is true. Clubs and schools nowadays tend to be very realistic about what a basic PPL allows prospective students to do.

It is NOT suitable for travelling in our hemispheres. If you are based south of the Alps and your primary destinations are even further south, this may be different, but for the rest of Europe, travelling with any degree of dispatch reliability requires IFR operation.

That’s your opinion, and of course it depends on what degree of reliability you mean. Fine, but in reality, it’s not that black or white.

In order to travel with and degree of reliability, without pressure and with adequate availability, you will need to own your own IFR/FIKI aircraft.

The bit about needing your own one is true. The bit about FIKI obviously isn’t.

PilotDAR:

When I started back flying in 2009 as well as 2010 and 11, I thought like this as well. Actually, I even doubted that IFR is needed. 2012 and now 13 has changed my mind drastically. And I am not “only” confronted with weather when I want to go flying but it’s actually what I do for a living, so I do get to see and work with the products involved every day.

Of course, what I say is what is how I see it where I live and where I want to fly to. Clearly, for other people who live elsewhere and have a different terrain and other aspects, things may well be totally different.

Switzerland basically consists of the Alpine Chain and some pre-alpine territory with elevations between 1000 and 5000 ft. Any and all flights in this country will mean crossing parts of at least the pre-alpine terrain which means scud running is not really something to relish. Consequently, IFR MEA is relatively high. High enough that icing can be and often is a problem even in ISA+20 situations in high summer when you get icing only above FL150 or so, but need to go to 170 to cross the alps for a start.

So it depends. I did my IR all these years back on the Senecas II and III and I saw enough Ice to know that unless an airplane is FIKI certified, in this region you will still see a lot of weather cancellations. That is my reasoning.

Now, I obviously can’t afford a plane like a Seneca, struggling to keep my Mooney which consumes 1/3rd of what a Seneca would. So I have to make concessions and will. IFR itself however is something I found to be absolutely necessary if you want to do ANY travelling with an acceptable degree of reliability. We usually get low stratus here for most of the time between November and March, with maybe 1-2 days per month where VMC prevails (>5km vis and ceiling above 1500 ft) for more than 2-3 hours per day. So in practice, my plane is unusable for 5 months per year just being VFR with the possible exception of the lottery chance that a day off and a day without low stratus AND without other weather like we had it the last few days (turbulence, storm) actually meet.

Add to that that my primary reason for having the plane is to travel to destinations mostly south of the alps. Now you can do statistics when the alps are crossable VFR with a sufficient degree of accuracy that would allow you to plan a trip maybe a week before. Was possible in 2010 and 11, went totally bad in 2012 and 13, where ALL my trips were cancelled and I was reduced to flying local flights. Well, for this I can rent at the aeroclub.

That is the background why I said what I did. Clearly, with different profiles come different requirements.

Best regards
Urs

Hi Philipp,

I’m sorry Urs, but I always seem to disagree with what you post ;-)

LOL, yea I have noticed :) Never mind, I won’t hold it against you!

Hugely exaggerated.

My experience here and what I hear from people who will adress me privately (after reading my website and others and some of my remarks in other places) is that this is mainly true and a major factor in so called flying clubs, where of coure most of the people learn to fly. I have been doing some presentations on the subject of flight planning in some of them and I did get the reply that they primarily were interested in day trips and trips within 200-300 NM as they were hugely discouraged to do anything else. At least 2 people in the last 2 years bought own planes because their clubs would not let them rent airplanes for longer trips.

The school I work with is the pure opposite, they have highly professional FI’s who also fly for a living. Some clubs however are pure hobby organisations.

Again, a huge generalization.

Well, this is what I hear and experienced here from people who gave up flying. Mostly I see two scenarios: Either a pilot buys his own plane or buys into a syndicate after a while or they stop flying. And buying their own planes is often massively hindered by clubs who do not want to “loose” the rental income (which they loose anyhow once the pilot stops) and who also place massive restrictions on the use of private airplanes on private airfields. Which is why up to this day I keep my plane on a very expensive international airport, as the alternatives don’t bear thinking.

Quite the contrary is true. Clubs and schools nowadays tend to be very realistic about what a basic PPL allows prospective students to do.

I’d be glad if that were the case. It may well be so in other places but it still is a huge problem around here.

That’s your opinion, and of course it depends on what degree of reliability you mean. Fine, but in reality, it’s not that black or white.

Ideally I would need to be able to set a flight date about a month in advance and have a 90% reliability of being able to depart ON THAT DAY possibly +1 and return on the day I have planned, which is about 2 months ahead of time again with maybe 2 days tolerance. Anything else makes little sense to me as I have to define my days off /vaccations months in advance and I have a fixed destination.

To do this requires an aircraft which can operate at most days with the reliability of an airliner. That is unrealistic for me as it is for most other GA owners. But even a normal IFR aircraft will lift the dispatch reliability from today 1-2% to maybe 50%. First of all I’d be able to operate into and out of my base with the darn low stratus, which would at least double the chance (in Winter usually there are a lot of very stable high pressure areas which would allow wonderful flights but for the fact that the homebase is under that stratus.) For the 2-3 minutes you are in coulds (they hardly are thicker than 1000-2000 ft) icing is not a lethal problem. In order to get up to maybe 70% I’d need FIKI. In order to fly over the alps IFR, a service ceiling of 17000 ft or higher is basically useful, if you consider density altitude.

So what I see is that those who fly a lot and reliably out of Switzerland usually own high performance airplanes such as either Senecas II or equivalent (with >17000 ft OEI Ceiling) or above or on the single front Malibus, Jet Props, TB850 or PC12. At the very least Singles like Turbo SR22 or possibly Cessna 210’s with full de icing. In order to get higher reliability you basically need a Citation.

And that is what I’d expect flight schools to tell people before they spend tens of thousands on something they can’t use. And I have heard those club guys brag about what they have done, what trips they have done and the hair rising situations that involved. Well, sorry, I am not interested in scud running nor in hairrising situations, i want to fly in order to relax and have a peace of mind. And I definitly am not a bold pilot but rather an old scare rabbit.

Maybe you can see my POV a bit better now.

Best regards
Urs

Maybe you can see my POV a bit better now.

Urs,

I’m following this thread with great interest. Both your last two posts that detailed your point of view make a lot of sense because they put your post from Nov 6 into perspective.

I think what was a bit ambiguous was that your original post (Nov 6) implied a much more universal scope and – if read in the context of this thread which is about mentoring – might easily be misunderstood.

For example, I see now why – taking into account your personal circumstances – you’d need your own A/C and you’d need it to be FIKI to achieve what you desire.

However, this

E) In order to travel with and degree of reliability, without pressure and with adequate availability, you will need to own your own IFR/FIKI aircraft.

surely doesn’t apply to every single – or even the average – PPL-aspirant and I think it is important to make that clear.

Regards

Patrick

Re renting vs. owning: I am certainly the last one to deny that owning makes touring so much easier and more relaxed. It really does. But I cannot say, from my experience with various german and italian aeroclubs, that taking one away for a few days is impossible.

This little tour I have done this late spring with one of my aeroclub’s C172s. Four days, eight tach hours. Agreed, if one wants to stay away for two weeks, it is going to get difficult (28 hours or more of flying would be way too much). And then possibly UK clubs are somewhat more restrictive than german ones in terms of multi day rental because they are actually flying schools in an aeroclub diguise.