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Lots of flying. Move to Alaska and you can fly non-stop with less strict guidelines
Must be why that Senator died earlier today in Alaska
It’s on my bucket list! I’ve actually saved up enough to cover it just through reduced personal travel during lockdown but I had an incident of BPPV a year or so back and I want to make sure it’s not going to come back (I would fail the medical) before I proceed further.
I’m a pilot and flight instructor (though not actively instructing). Definitely worth it for me! It does require a commitment to continue. You don’t want to get it and then never fly again. And it’s a much higher level of commitment of time and money than things like sailing, SCUBA, etc.
Process wise you do flight and ground training. Flight training will take around 60 hours of flight instruction (engine on). Ground training is about 30 or so and can be done through self study / online learning.
You have a few options for the degree of formality. Everything from an independent flight instructor (like me) in an older, cheaper plane you rent (or even buy) all the way to a major flight training academy built for career pilots. I went with something in the middle: a flight school with a good fleet of modern plane (about 7 planes) that follows a standard curriculum.
The most important thing though that I did that I would highly recommend is doing it all at once straight through. It took me about 7 weeks — but that was at a slightly leisurely pace. You could easily get it down to 5 or 6 weeks. I’ve even seen it done in 30 days.
Yeah everyone I’ve talked to says it’s cheapest and best to do it all in one go — the more you stretch it out the more you lose muscle memory and need to spend time relearning each flight. There’s even some places where you can go to like AZ/NM and spend a super intense 2-3 weeks and walk away with a PPL for less than 10k — although of course maintaining currency is then up to you.
Got mine in college, was just planning to start flying again before COVID happened. It was more studying than I expected but a great hobby. Alot of small airports do an intro flight for around $100. I’d start there.
Had a SM that fly his own mini plane weekly to clients