About safety pilots.
I always wonder why UK clubs won’t allow a first time channel crossing without a safety pilot. The real difficulty in channel crossing is the preparation, not the flying.
Instructors I know usually don’t know a lot about travelling in a small plane for real. They won’t know the regulations of the other country (or only by hearsay), they won’t be able to speak the local language, most of them have never reflected on how to make a real and operational flight preparation on a modern plane with an iPad and a good piece of software (they wouldn’t know about autorouter(!) nor eurofpl), etc.
Nevertheless another experienced pilot can be helpful
- to prepare the flight: what weather to expect, local regulations and customs, what good questions to ask oneself about your destination airport etc.
- to fell more relax during the flight: when an unexpected thing occurs (and it happens) it’s good to have someone who will tell you if what happened is normal or not. When the workload begins to be overwhelming, you know someone will help so you can test your limits.
I agree that you should not fly with someone else all the time. It does built some confidence to fly with another pilot, but your confidence will of course be better built when you are on your own.
I don’t think that passengers are good for the pilot. They distract your decision making( the famous destinationitis because you don’t want to disappoint them) and you flying task (lookout etc.).
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with this. If flying IFR (or long trips with a little more certaintly of getting there and back around the planned dates) is what you want to do I personally would start it as soon as you can in your flying career.
Yes, true, because the earlier you buy your “last” plane the more currency on type you will have, etc. I bought the TB20 just 50hrs after finishing my PPL and never regretted that. Have to say however that the process was accelerated by the junk I had to rent in those 50 hrs 
But that approach requires
And if you ask a new pilot questions about that, a number of others will jump on you, saying that he/she should first have some “fun”, try different types, try different kinds of flying… So you can’t win.
I always wonder why UK clubs won’t allow a first time channel crossing without a safety pilot. The real difficulty in channel crossing is the preparation, not the flying.
The “cross channel checkout” is a bizzare UK ritual.
They could teach people the stuff they need to know to fly to Le Touquet during the normal PPL.
And once you know that, you can fly to Biarritz, or anywhere else.
And if you ask a new pilot questions about that, a number of others will jump on you, saying that he/she should first have some “fun”, try different types, try different kinds of flying…
I agree that fun and flying different types is important and help understand underlying flying principles, but that isn’t mutually exclusive to buying your last plane first, is it? Your plane won’t be envious if you try some otherplane once in a while…
