Advice about which school to go with

Steven,

IMHO, it all comes down to the specific flight instructor you choose or get assigned to work with. To me, this is the primary variable on whether you will: enjoy your lessons, learn to be a safe & effective pilot, stick with it to get your PPL, etc.

If I were you, I'd go and visit both schools and get introduced to the flight instructors. Find out which ones would likely be assigned to be your flight instructor (a school might have more than a dozen of them but they don't all have the same schedules, student preferences, etc.). Then, out of that smaller set of likely instructors, pick the best one from each school. Then, go to lunch with those two competing instructors and evaluate for yourself which one is the better fit.

I started my initial PPL flight training in 1994 and gave up on it 3 times over a 16 year time period. I finally got my PPL in early 2010 after starting training up again in earnest about 9 months before that. So, I've had several flight instructors over the years. They are not the same. I learned a lot from each one but a couple of them were head & shoulders better than the other 5 or 6 I had experience with.

Here is Rod Machado's article on how to find a good flight instructor:
http://www.rodmachado.com/?p=170

Believe it or not, the more energy and methodology you put into selecting your flight instructor, the more likely the flight instructors will see that as a good thing, not a negative. Flight instructors dream about students who will take the time to prepare for each flight lesson. You'll be showing them that you just might be one of them.

Good luck.

 

He said it all in one post. Taking that instructor to lunch or a steak dinner either one will be money well spent.

You want an instructor that is available when you are for a lesson. One more bit of advice is plan to do your flying during the good weather part of the year. This way you can fly and learn rather than taking a lesson then having to sit out a week or two due to WX and have to re-do the last lesson because it won't be fresh in your mind.

Have enough money for the whole course and fly it off in blocks of 10 hours and just go through it non-stop so you get there in the minimum 40 hours or as close to it as possible. This way you don't waste time re-accomplishing parts of the syllabus. Good luck and have fun.

 

It's all about the instructor. Find a guy you like.

I did my PPL in 6 weeks. IFR in 2 weeks and multi in 2 weeks. I found a kid I liked and I flew all day every day.

Ground school, especially for the PPL is a waste of time. You need to be flying and then studying for the written exam on your own. Don't get caught up in some big sales pitch from a big school.

Flying is a lifestyle. It's like golf. To be good and safe at it, you need to live the lifestyle. That means training at least once a year if not more and flying all the time. I fly over 300 hours per year.

Here's the bottom line...... I learned very little about flying getting my PPL. But, since I got my PPL, I learned everything. The PPL is a license to learn. The only way you learn about flying is to do it. You'll retain nothing from a classroom. Fine the quickest, easiest and least expensive path to your PPL and get it done. The best way to do this is find an independent CFI and find someone to rent you an airplane.

I also like un towered airports for the PPL. You need to sit there for hours and do touch and go's. Can't do this easily at a towered airport. You'll end up spending lot's of time commuting to other airports to do basic work. Costs to much.

I got my PPl at KFHB. Good luck.

 

All very true. The non-towered thing may seem like a stretch, but it isn't. I know several pilots who came up flying at towered fields and are reluctant to fly anywhere non-towered because they never developed a sense of self reliance with respect to scanning for traffic, sequencing themselves, etc. Seems odd, but it happens.

Also, if you go with the 141 school, some of the hour requirements are different...for instance, commercial takes 190 total hours instead of 250. Don't know how far you want to go, but it's a consideration if you decide to continue...and, as Jason said, you do need to be very serious about this activity. I personally know of TWELVE people who have died in accidents and two more who shouldn't be alive and are incredibly lucky. These folks weren't hacks, either. I echo the recommendation to actively seek as much training as you can possibly get.

As was said, the instructor is very important, too. When I first started working on my private, I had a very green instructor who was not yet good at getting his points across in an effective manner (of course, it did not help that I was suffering from extreme motion sickness at first!). Knowing little about the instruction process, I didn't realize this and figured I was a moron. Then, when I got with my second instructor, it all seemed so much easier because he was able to articulate exactly what I was doing wrong and what I was doing right. Things progressed very quickly under his watch. So, definitely try to find someone you can communicate with easily. Much less $$ in the end! This flying stuff ain't cheap Best of luck!

 

A good way to ask as a question to a potential flight instructor is to ask open ended questions. Here are some examples.

- What are the top 3 things, in your opinion, are the most important keys to making a good landing?

- What are the main criteria we're going to use for making a go / no go decision to go flying or not on a specific day?

- Safety is a big issue for me, what things are you going to teach me to minimize my own risks when I start to fly solo later in the curriculum?

- I want to enjoy my training lessons, what kind of things can we do to mix some fun in while still progressing on my training.

There are no pat right or wrong answers to these kinds of questions but they'll probably reveal some insights into the CFI's personality.

 

If you follow through and make flying a part of your life you'll soon see that it's a very, very small community. If someone kills themselves, chances are you know them or you know someone else who does know them. It's not because it happens a lot. It's because there are so few private pilots in this country.

More people die in 1 month of auto accidents than in the last 40 years of aviation accidents.

The most dangerous part of any flight is the drive to the airport.

 

RDU. Get the most radio and controlled airspace experience you can win an instructor sitting beside you. Sims are useless for your private ticket, so not a factor.

 

That's true as well. I should have clarified -- I'm never going to discourage anyone from beginning as a pilot, no way! The rewards are well worth the risks, and, in many ways, the risks are greatly minimized by good training and good decision making.

IIRC, there are what, about 280,000-300,000 pilots in the US?

 

Regardless whether you are based at a towered airport or not, a good instructor will have you fly and land at one regularly to get you used to dealing with the airspace, radio traffic, sequencing and ground operations.

This teaches you a number of things including good cockpit management and settling your nerves when you have to pay attention to what is being said on the radio while maintaining your heading, assigned altitude, looking for traffic and on and on.

The other fellow that mentioned that ground school was a waste of time; I couldn't disagree with more; it is vital. This is where you learn the basics of flight, aerodynamics, map reading, and all the other things you'll be doing when you do get up in the air and put it all together. There are things that are better learned or introduced on the gound, not while your brain is being saturated in the air in a heavy traffic pattern at a controlled airport.

I learned at Albuquerque Intnl Airport which gets busy, hot, and windy! We departed there and went to Double Eagle airport to do pattern work and landings so that it would be ingrained, familiar and comfortable before doing that kind of work at ABQ in all that traffic.

Never get the attitude of just hauling off and flying and figuring out all the rest when you get time or inclination; that "hot dog" attitude has buried a bunch of folks. Take your time, enjoy each lesson and push yourself to perfect each task with precision whether it's plotting a course or flying it faithfully.

Ground school is the foundation that the rest is built upon and is why it is "usually" a pre-requisite for flight instruction. If it were a waste of time, flight schools wouldn't be doing it and there wouldn't be regulations that dictate its necessity. Blue skies...

 

I found most flight schools were a rip off. They'd force you to only fly a couple hours each day so they could rack up their bill time. There are lot's of outstanding independent CFI's out there.

Personally, I learned nothing in ground school. "Telling" someone how to fly does not make you a good pilot. Flying makes you a good pilot.

Everyone learns in a different way. It took me to about the 800 hour mark before pretty much everything I encountered as a pilot had "been done before and experienced".

 

Here's the entire private pilot exam with answer and explanations. Memorize and you'll pass the written.

http://www.coryat.com/faa-pp-written/index.html

 

I agree that finding an instructor that works well for you is more important than the type of school. That not only means one that clicks with you pedagogically, but one that fits your schedule. Also, check on airplane availability, smaller schools are more limited in their fleet and scheduling issues with your preferred plane can cause downtime on a day you planned a lesson.

Regarding controlled vs uncontrolled airspace. It's nice to have the choice. Some pilots that learn in uncontrolled airspace are more nervous in entering controlled airspace, they can't keep up with the chatter. Then there's the arguably better scanning habits of those in uncontrolled airspace. I learned at an airport at the edge of Class B airspace, if you went East, you got left alone, if you went West, you got lots of ATC practice. Getting comfortable with ATC is good for the next step, your instrument rating.