Collecting ratings

JFonseca wrote:

night, BIR

I would do those asap and then try to fly a bit around Europe and get some real world experience. Rather spend money on that instead of more immediate training.

JFonseca wrote:

it would be fun to be a contract pilot

Then it might be worth to think about an ATPL instead of spending money and time on CPL etc. I did sit in an ATPL class at some point next to beginners and also very experienced CPL pilots who had to do it all again for an ATPL. They should have done the ATPL 10 years earlier and would have saved a lot of learning and money in the long run.

I have a couple of contract pilot friends in Europe and you really need the ATP for that. Different to a degree in the US, although even here the ATP really helps in finding contract work.

I have a couple of contract pilot friends in Europe and you really need the ATP for that.

Really? Plenty of turboprops and smaller jets flown by people with CPL.

There is practically no market for non-ATPL CPL (as many others have said here).

Banner towing is quite rare (pretty dangerous too). Skydiving pilots are a closed-knit circle (at least here in France) with not much possibility for entry. Ferry flights are also in no shortage of pilots (I’ve heard it’s not that hard to find a good pilot for free for a ferry flight…)

You may get better luck in tourism flights (if you can nail the market). But then IR / night is useless, and you can’t do A-B flights (you have to go back to base).

I went through this question myself, and deemed the best way to go about things is to 1) become an excellent private pilot, bring friends and family along in trips and 2) own a good plane and decrease costs by increasing expertise – learn maintenance, search for good to own aircraft models, know insurance markets etc… instead of searching for people who would pay you to fly.

I agree that keeping you flying and interested by doing more than PPL is a great idea, it’s just that I don’t see any point in doing CPL/ATPL (except to become an airline pilot – there’s a real market there).

Yes – airline or bizjet. In Europe that’s about it.

You need the IR also.

Ferry business is often done on a PPL, too Paradropping has been widely done on a PPL; it’s often been a rather swashbuckling scene, especially in places like Spain.

In Europe there is no ATPL course of study. I suspect what is meant above by “non ATPL CPL” is a CPL or CPL/IR done without the 13 “ATPL” exams. Such a CPL (or CPL/IR) is just that but can never be upgraded to an ATPL via the European ATPL route where you get a CPL/ME/IR, get a job, plant your bum in the RHS of a Part 25 aircraft for 500hrs, and then they give you an ATPL. See e.g. here. This CPL is most often done by FIs, to teach the Euro PPL.

If you want to become FI, you will need CPL first or you will be limited to teaching for LAPL. And for what you would like to do in the future, IR and MEP will be required, as Peter said.

This is the sequence I followed (which doesn’t mean it’s the best one, but it worked well for me):
1. PPL
2. Start ATPL Theory. It is a big one, but you do only one theory cycle that covers every flight training you will go through, instead of IR theory and CPL theory. Also, you can do it while you are training for IR, which is a long one.
3. Night qualification (really liked that one!)
4. MEP
5. IR-SE
6. IR-ME. That is a quick add-on to the IR-SE, and it’s cheaper than training only IR-ME (that would cover also IR-SE) from the beginning. You will have to do 2 exams though, but for me it was no big deal and also used that exam to revalidate my MEP)
7. CPL. As you can read on many other threads on this forum, the EASA CPL flight training is a sort of “more accurate PPL”, and a lot of focus goes on emergencies and captainship. After the IR your handling should already be within the tolerances of a CPL.
8. A-UPRT

I did all of that with a full time job, so it took the time it took (I could do flight training mainly in the weekends). The nice part is that you keep learning new stuff!
On the ATPL theory, it took about 1 year of self study and tests every evening, and after that I needed a bit of time to adapt to the new reality of having free time before going to sleep :) In other words, you have to like it or to be quite motivated.

You can also add some fun with the various SEP differences trainings (Tailwheel, Retractable gear, Variable Pitch propeller, etc).
Happy training and enjoy the journey!

I haven’t been part of the gliding/sailplane (USA parlance) community, but some airlines value the experience. Team building, energy management, airmanship, and at a certain level the hours count towards CPL.

I understood that an FI without a CPL can teach PPL these days?

Under EASA (and I think UK hasn’t changed) a new FI now needs at least the CPL exams done at the respective CAA to instruct PPL. Without that, one can only instruct LAPL. At least in Germany there are many older FIs without CPL whose privileges to teach PPL have been grandfathered.

You need just the CPL exams, not the CPL itself, to teach the PPL.

The UK grandfathered all the old PPL-FIs many years ago into what became the “BCPL”. Also the UK had some scheme whereby a CPL came automatically with the IMC Rating; one old FI I used to fly with said to me he could teach the IMCR without ever having any instrument flying instruction, even though his “CPL” was grandfathered via the BCPL route. There have been many open doors like this in GA; they nearly always got shut down, by JAA and later by EASA.