Before we dive into topics about how to save money on aviation, I wanted to give my readers some background on myself and why I'm interested in aviation. If you don't care about me and just want to hear advice on flight training, go ahead and skip this post. Stay tuned though, I promise my later posts will be less personal and more applicable to all of the other stingy pilots out there.
There's no explaining why we as aviation enthusiasts have a need to fly; sure we'll try to justify it by saying its a quick way to get from one place to another, but its really a lot more than that. We are inflicted with a disease which pilots refer to as "the bug" and once we're infected, we just have to get up in the air.
I can't say for sure when I contracted the bug, but it was before I can remember. I have pictures that show of me snuggling my fighter jet blanket (with F-14s and F-4s and I can't remember what else) when I was still young enough to be using a pacifier. I remember getting in trouble in preschool for throwing my lego airplanes (can you believe they expected me to engineer an aircraft of my own design and then not even flight test it?!) When I was a little older (probably too old for this) I remember setting up my Light-Brite to look like an instrument panel, sitting in the bathtub with a few of my brothers and sisters as passengers and then pretending to fly them wherever they wanted to go. I lived next to a Navy base and loved to watch the F-18s and occasional AV-8s flying around. By the time I graduated from elementary school I could identify all of the common US fighters and a few of the bombers and new bits of trivia about all of them. In my early pre-teens, I got my first copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. It had really crude graphics and not very realistic flight dynamics, but man did I think it was cool. I spent countless hours on that simulator, and not just playing around either; I was training.
For a good portion of my childhood, I wanted to be an F-18 pilot, but as I got a little older, I realized that while it would be cool to fly F-18s, I was a family guy and probably didn't want to be in the military. I'm not saying that a military pilot can't be a good family guy, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn't for me. I think it was when I listened to a cassette tape by John Bytheway (a Mormon youth speaker and private pilot) called "First Solo" that I realized that I could be a pilot even if that wasn't my career. I think I was probably between 10 and 12 when I made the decision and goal that one day, I would be a private pilot.
The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) has a very noble program called Young Eagles in which private pilots donate their gas and time to take kids between the ages of 7 and 18 to go fly in a small airplane. They are usually pretty short flights, but after taking off and climbing to a safe area, they actually let the kids fly the airplane. Oh, and its completely free! I took my one and only Young Eagles flight when I was about 14 and had a blast. I don't remember what kind of plane I flew (since I wasn't great at identifying non-military aircraft back then). The object is to inspire kids to learn to fly, but I already wanted to learn to fly. For me, the program inspired me to volunteer for Young Eagles once I get my license. Not only was that my first time piloting and airplane, but it was actually the only time I had ever been in an airplane (airliners included).
As I went on to junior high, high school and college I went through phases where I would become obsessed with airplanes, break out the old flight simulator for a while and then it would gradually wear off again. In college I went through a bad stretch where I downloaded Microsoft Flight Simulator X and some RC flight simulator and flew them way too much. After it got to the point that I was flying during class and not learning anything, I deleted the simulators.
After I graduated, the bug reared its ugly head again and this time it wasn't going anywhere. I found a new flight simulator which I highly recommend. Its an open source simulator called Flight Gear. You can download it for free at www.flightgear.org. Then I started wondering if there were any good aviation podcasts out there and I found The Student Pilot Cast. Thats when I found out that the FAA student pilot resources are all free online so I started reading the FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook. I read almost the entire thing on the toilet during my bathroom breaks at work, on the bus to and from work, while my code was compiling, while I was supposed to be watching my kid, pretty much any chance I could. In the meantime I discovered another general aviation podcast called The Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast or UCAP which I am still listening to today.
That's when I really got serious about pilot training and for the first time ever, I really started looking into how much it would cost. Needless to say, the answer was pretty disappointing.
At the time, I worked in a large tech company in Silicon Valley, and we had a mailing list there where you could write about random things to other employees. It had a few thousand subscribers, so it was a great way to reach a wide audience with any question. So I decided to write an email asking my coworkers for any tips on how to learn to fly affordably. I got a surprising number of responses, some of which had some really great advice. The overall consensus was that there's no way to fly for cheap, but that there are certainly some things you can do to make it a little cheaper. There was one thing very troublesome about the responses that I got though, something that is probably the main reason I decided to start this blog. I received a response from roughly a dozen people, almost all of whom were interested in flying. Of those dozen, a little less than half of them had ever started flight training. Of those who started flight training, only about half of them finished and got a license. Of those who had licenses, only one of them still flies. And the one person who still flies, only flies sailplanes now. The reason for not starting training, for not finishing training, for not flying now, and for not flying powered airplanes was the same in every case: it is too expensive.
This really concerns me. If this group was any representation of the overall world population, then there must be tens or hundreds of millions of people who wish they could fly, but who can't afford it.
That's what brought me to this blog. I'm on a mission to find out how us normal people can fly and I need the help of all of my readers to do it.
Happy Flying!
If you have comments specifically regarding this post, please leave them in the comments section below. If you have comments regarding any other topic related to cost effective flying or some general feedback about the blog overall, please send them to thestingypilot@gmail.com and I will try to address them in a future post.
There's no explaining why we as aviation enthusiasts have a need to fly; sure we'll try to justify it by saying its a quick way to get from one place to another, but its really a lot more than that. We are inflicted with a disease which pilots refer to as "the bug" and once we're infected, we just have to get up in the air.
I can't say for sure when I contracted the bug, but it was before I can remember. I have pictures that show of me snuggling my fighter jet blanket (with F-14s and F-4s and I can't remember what else) when I was still young enough to be using a pacifier. I remember getting in trouble in preschool for throwing my lego airplanes (can you believe they expected me to engineer an aircraft of my own design and then not even flight test it?!) When I was a little older (probably too old for this) I remember setting up my Light-Brite to look like an instrument panel, sitting in the bathtub with a few of my brothers and sisters as passengers and then pretending to fly them wherever they wanted to go. I lived next to a Navy base and loved to watch the F-18s and occasional AV-8s flying around. By the time I graduated from elementary school I could identify all of the common US fighters and a few of the bombers and new bits of trivia about all of them. In my early pre-teens, I got my first copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. It had really crude graphics and not very realistic flight dynamics, but man did I think it was cool. I spent countless hours on that simulator, and not just playing around either; I was training.
For a good portion of my childhood, I wanted to be an F-18 pilot, but as I got a little older, I realized that while it would be cool to fly F-18s, I was a family guy and probably didn't want to be in the military. I'm not saying that a military pilot can't be a good family guy, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn't for me. I think it was when I listened to a cassette tape by John Bytheway (a Mormon youth speaker and private pilot) called "First Solo" that I realized that I could be a pilot even if that wasn't my career. I think I was probably between 10 and 12 when I made the decision and goal that one day, I would be a private pilot.
The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) has a very noble program called Young Eagles in which private pilots donate their gas and time to take kids between the ages of 7 and 18 to go fly in a small airplane. They are usually pretty short flights, but after taking off and climbing to a safe area, they actually let the kids fly the airplane. Oh, and its completely free! I took my one and only Young Eagles flight when I was about 14 and had a blast. I don't remember what kind of plane I flew (since I wasn't great at identifying non-military aircraft back then). The object is to inspire kids to learn to fly, but I already wanted to learn to fly. For me, the program inspired me to volunteer for Young Eagles once I get my license. Not only was that my first time piloting and airplane, but it was actually the only time I had ever been in an airplane (airliners included).
As I went on to junior high, high school and college I went through phases where I would become obsessed with airplanes, break out the old flight simulator for a while and then it would gradually wear off again. In college I went through a bad stretch where I downloaded Microsoft Flight Simulator X and some RC flight simulator and flew them way too much. After it got to the point that I was flying during class and not learning anything, I deleted the simulators.
After I graduated, the bug reared its ugly head again and this time it wasn't going anywhere. I found a new flight simulator which I highly recommend. Its an open source simulator called Flight Gear. You can download it for free at www.flightgear.org. Then I started wondering if there were any good aviation podcasts out there and I found The Student Pilot Cast. Thats when I found out that the FAA student pilot resources are all free online so I started reading the FAA's Airplane Flying Handbook. I read almost the entire thing on the toilet during my bathroom breaks at work, on the bus to and from work, while my code was compiling, while I was supposed to be watching my kid, pretty much any chance I could. In the meantime I discovered another general aviation podcast called The Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast or UCAP which I am still listening to today.
That's when I really got serious about pilot training and for the first time ever, I really started looking into how much it would cost. Needless to say, the answer was pretty disappointing.
At the time, I worked in a large tech company in Silicon Valley, and we had a mailing list there where you could write about random things to other employees. It had a few thousand subscribers, so it was a great way to reach a wide audience with any question. So I decided to write an email asking my coworkers for any tips on how to learn to fly affordably. I got a surprising number of responses, some of which had some really great advice. The overall consensus was that there's no way to fly for cheap, but that there are certainly some things you can do to make it a little cheaper. There was one thing very troublesome about the responses that I got though, something that is probably the main reason I decided to start this blog. I received a response from roughly a dozen people, almost all of whom were interested in flying. Of those dozen, a little less than half of them had ever started flight training. Of those who started flight training, only about half of them finished and got a license. Of those who had licenses, only one of them still flies. And the one person who still flies, only flies sailplanes now. The reason for not starting training, for not finishing training, for not flying now, and for not flying powered airplanes was the same in every case: it is too expensive.
This really concerns me. If this group was any representation of the overall world population, then there must be tens or hundreds of millions of people who wish they could fly, but who can't afford it.
That's what brought me to this blog. I'm on a mission to find out how us normal people can fly and I need the help of all of my readers to do it.
Happy Flying!
If you have comments specifically regarding this post, please leave them in the comments section below. If you have comments regarding any other topic related to cost effective flying or some general feedback about the blog overall, please send them to thestingypilot@gmail.com and I will try to address them in a future post.
A lot of those stories bring back some great memories.
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