Myths about Flight Training
There are many, many reasons why people who have a genuine interest in learning to fly don’t pursue it, but a few reasons are more common than others. If you have a real passion to learn, achieving starts with believing. We endeavour to help more people enter aviation by trying to combat these 3 (often very scalable) walls!
This is by far the biggest reason people don’t get into flying, but it really is achievable if you’re smart about it and want it badly enough. More flying more often is generally best practice, but not always practical. If you can’t fly once a week, fly once a fortnight, or once a month.
How much do you spend on lunch and coffee every week? Let’s say $10 each a day, $50 a week, so it’s likely over $200 a month. That’s almost a whole one hour lesson right there with Soar. Choose more efficient and leaner training models: you wouldn’t learn to drive in a Ferrari, you’d learn maybe in a Camry. Because ultimately, you get exactly the same Licence. Why not have the same attitudes for the skies?
Ultimately you need to choose, do you want a 6-inch sub and Gatorade everyday at work, or do you want to learn how to fly? If you earn $800 a week after tax and fly once a month ($229 p/h), that’s only 7% of your pay.
We do appreciate this point is a little subjective and situation dependent, options are always there – and we try to accommodate.
Life is busy, there’s no doubt about it. Full-time job, study/school, kids, partners, friends, extended families, holidays, relaxation time, the list goes on.
If you’re struggling with finding time, ask your Instructor or school for help. Maybe one weekend you can do a double booking and miss the following week? There’s a public holiday coming up? Brilliant, lock it in Eddy.
If you’ve got to take kids to a sporting event, why not use that time to “watch” your kids whilst you complete your RPL or PPL theory. If your lesson is rained out, get some theory done or jump on the simulator. It’ll benefit you in the long run anyway because:
- You’ve got to do the theory element anyway, even if it’s not your forte unfortunately!
- Being up to speed with theory generally means you spend less time talking about it in the aircraft with your Instructor; that is valuable flying time. It also means you’ll spend less money on flight revision, tying back into point number one.
But ultimately, think of it this way: A one-hour flying lesson is only 4% of your day. A one-hour flying lesson once a week is only 0.59% of your week.
So, do you really not have time? Or do you not want to make time?
Believe it or not, you don’t need to have finished Year 12 (or even Year 10 for that matter), or have a Bachelor in Aviation Management to become a Pilot. Whilst you do need some cognitive ability to learn to fly, it’s not as difficult as most people think.
As long as you can read and write enough to understand the theory element and complete your enrolment forms, you should be fine. You do also need to be able to pass a medical, but you don’t need to be a marathon runner. Lots of Pilots have glasses and are partially colour blind too, so stop making excuses.
To become employed as a Commercial Pilot it’s probably advantageous to have something like your Year 10/12 Certificate, but it’s certainly not a pre-requisite. If you would submit the same answer to this question as below, Aviation probably isn’t for you:
If you’re still unsure, take a long hard think about what you really want – and if you’ve got any questions, let us know.