My sister has offered to buy my oldest son a trial lesson for his 15th birthday next month.
I was just looking at the flyskyways website that offers training in Kent.
Is it possible to have a lesson every few months to get to your PPL or do you need to do it more often (lest you forget it all)?
Thanks
Not sure about lessons, but when you do hold the licence you have to fly several hours a month to keep it valid. Sounds like the beginning of an expensive habit.
I did an hours flying lesson at Biggin Hill just for the experience, then I got hooked and asked about obtaining my private pilot licence!.. I worked out to qualify it would cost £35,000… and thats without buying a plane! :hehe:
I did mine over about 6 months…did some time on a simulator in Fulham first (Fulham Air Training Services round behind the Broadway) run by Monique Agazarian, and the time was well spent ( 10 hours - much cheaper than real time) and was able to control (take off) the plane first time out…This was quite a few years ago so FATS may no longer be there
I fell behind on flying hours 8mentioned by somebody else here) and need to re-take some of the exams to fly again…doubt I’ll ever do it though…
I ain’t gettin on no plane fool!! 
I worked with a couple of people a few years back who did this and they eventually saved up and went to the States to get their licence, it was cheaper back in those days, but then they were serious about flying as a career so saw it as a worthwhile investment, eventually going on to obtain their commercial licence.
My brothers had a couple of lessons at Southampton airport and loved it but as has already been said, it’s a bl00dy expensive hobby, although I know you can buy/rent a part share of a plane to keep the cost’s down.
If he’s keen on flying then go for it, although be warned it is very addictive, and is a very expensive hobby to have!
To summarise it PPLs in the UK are broken down into the National Private Pilots License (NPPL) and the full European JAR-PPL. The NPPL is a UK recreational license and as such is much easier achieve and keep current both in terms of flying hours and medical requirements than a JAR-PPL. The price you pay for this is that the NPPL is very limiting in terms of what flying you can do. The JAR-PPL, on the other hand, can be extended with numerous additional ratings.
As far as learning to fly goes continuity is very important and makes a big difference. Ideally you’d learn to fly in a continuous course, that way you have less chance to forget what you have learnt during the last lesson. At the very least you need to be looking at once a week, otherwise your hour in the air will be spent recapping and relearning forgotten skills. With lesson going between £110 and £130 per hour that is not viable!! Remember the 32 and 45 hr requirements for your license are minimums, few people have the required skills within those time frames.
Finally remember the older you get the longer it will take you! If your son is genuinely interested in flying after his trial lesson point him in the direction of the Air Training Corps, their flying training is free and to a much higher standard than you will usually find in the civilian world!
when rockerchic was at uni she got it all free as a potential raf officer but they do expect you to join up if you make the grade…i think she fell off
I’ve got about 10 hours flying experience. Mainly in Africa, there is nothing like landing on those dirt strips. Scariest was coming in to land (not me flying though) at Shiwa Ngandu in Zambia - tall trees just feet below you, wind sheer and crosswinds. So you get dropped vertically and shifted sidewards at the same time. Another fun moment was getting stuck in a Hippo wallow hole after a warthog ran accross the strip in front of us as we were landing.
The cheapest way to get the PPL used to be to go to Zimbabwe and do it.
Only costs about 150 zillion per hour now.
Yeah, I agree the best way for him if he is serious about learning to fly, is the air training corp. I was in the university RAF squadron for 2 years and I got about 15 hours worth of flying done, all for free, plus all my travel expenses to get to Liverpool were paid too. It was a brilliant experience and I really wish I had my pilots license but I left after the 2 years as that was the point where they wanted me to sign my life away! You will need a lot of hours training, as it is unbelievably hard, you need to fly as often as you can and then keep going over all the stuff when you are not flying, just to remember all the 101 things you need to set before you can even get the plane moving!
If you can ride a bike in heavy traffic without getting knocked off you can fly a plane. The pre-flight checks etc are straightforward enough really. First solo is a scarey moment though !
Good mechanical reasoning/ability and decent hand-eye co-ordination will usually ensure you’ll be able to pilot an aircraft. If you’re the sort of person that finds operating machinery comes naturally then chances are so will flying.
Normal private flying is not ridiculously impossible, and is a hobby enjoyed by many people from all walks of life. The style of flying practised on the University Air Squadron (RAF aligned) is (was 
) rather more intense than that taught at your normal flying school. As for checks, you’ve not seen a real check list until if you’ve seen an RAF one! As an example for the basic trainer, from getting into the cockpit to lining up on the runway the RAF require 140 separate checks to be carried out from memory in the correct order and essentially word perfect. A similar aircraft in a civilian environment requires 60, only 12 of which need to be done by memory, the rest can be read from a check list!
Yeah, the RAF are pretty strict on this! All those hours revising!! :doze:
