Friends in High Places

One of the best ways you can cut down the cost of learning to fly is to have friends in high places. When I say "high places" of course, I mean thousands of feet AGL. If you happen to have a friend who is a CFI, airplane owner, a pilot, or even another student pilot, you could benefit from advice, resources, experiences, or even discounts on training time.

Here's a list of a few ways having friends in aviation can help:

There's a lot to learn

As I started getting serious about my flight training, I was surprised at just how much there is to learn. I thought that since I'm an airplane nut and since I've been casually studying airplanes for years, the knowledge portion of flight training wouldn't be that difficult for me.

I was very wrong.

For me, I could pick up all of the stuff about aerodynamics and how actually flying an airplane works, but memorizing all of the various regulations and meteorology concepts has been pretty overwhelming. There are great resources online to learn all of this, including forums to ask whatever questions you have, but it can be really handy to have some knowledgeable friends close by that you can ask questions in person. You almost certainly will have questions as you are trying to learn all of the required information. If you learn this by asking a friend, it will be a lot more cost effective than asking your CFI while he or she is charging you $65-$120/hr.

Opportunities travel by word of mouth

As a technology guy, I am amazed at how bad flight schools, flight clubs, and pilots are at using the internet to advertise anything related to flight training. Most significant flight schools have a website (and most are outdated) and some flight clubs have one, but many opportunities only travel by word of mouth.

If you do an internet search for flight schools in your area, you will probably find a few, but not all of them. There may be one or more smaller flight schools that don't have websites and there will almost certainly by a few individual CFI's that don't have any web presence at all.

This is even more true for opportunities to rent, buy, or co-own an airplane. Big rental establishments will certainly have a web presence, but an individual who is thinking about renting out a personal airplane, or who is looking for a partner to share an airplane probably will not. The best way to find these sorts of opportunities is to just ask around and you may find that a friend of a friend has just the opportunity you need.

Flying OPA

My favorite way to take advantage of - ahem, I mean spend time with - my pilot friends is to fly with them. Flying Other People's Airplanes (OPA) is the cheapest way to get some actual flight experience. I have only actually done this a couple of times, but it was great fun and in my case didn't cost me a dime. Often a pilot friend may enjoy the company and be happy to take you along and perhaps even let you take the controls for a while.

Time spent flying with a friend won't actually count towards the 40 hours that are required for your private pilot license (unless your friend happens to be a certified flight instructor (CFI)), but remember that getting loggable hours usually is not as important as getting experience and skills. Most people take more than 40 hours to get ready for their check ride anyway.

Flying OPA is also a great way to try stuff out. If you are shopping for an airplane, or maybe something smaller like a headset, some avionics, or an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB, which is software that usually runs on a table to show moving maps, airport information, etc.) trying out a friend's could be a good way get a sample before you invest the money. It could also help you define your mission as you try out different types of flying. For example maybe you thought that you wanted to focus your flying on traveling to places quickly, but after taking a flight in a friends Cub, you realize that low and slow flying is really what you want.

Some things to be aware of

Even for someone who owns their airplane, flying is expensive and you should be willing to share the cost. Your friend may or may not ask for any payment, but it would certainly be polite to offer to help pay for gas.

Legally, a non-commercial pilot cannot receive any compensation beyond his/her share of the total cost of the flight. In other words, if it is just you and the pilot in the friend, then the pilot must pay at least half of the total cost of the flight. The legal interpretations of this can get a little tricky and vague, so my advice would be to not push it. For example, if you chose to split the cost of gas to take a flight to an amusement park, and then you decided to pay for your friends admission to the amusement park as a way of saying thank you, that could be viewed by the FAA as flying for compensation or hire, which is a no no without a commercial license.

While you can learn a lot from your friend on your flight, remember that he or she is not a CFI (unless your friend actually is a CFI). Your friend probably has more aviation knowledge than you do, so it would be wise to learn as much as you can, but if anything contradicts what you have learned from an actual CFI, take it with some healthy skepticism.

Borrowing stuff

Other than the unlikely scenario where a friend happens to have an airplane that you can just borrow, this probably isn't going to save you thousands of dollars, but every little bit helps.

Pilot gear can be expensive and if a friend has some that is just lying around, they may be willing to let you borrow some of it. Most pilot's probably have an old ground school book that they aren't using, or perhaps a flight computer or other small gadget. If you're really lucky, you may even find someone willing to help you out with something more expensive like a headset or (if you're extremely lucky) even an airplane. I have heard of at least one case where a student pilot has a close family friend who is a CFI and owns an airplane, but obviously that's an exceptional circumstace.

My friends in high places

The fortunate thing about being a complete aviation nut is that I'm drawn to other aviation nuts and therefore know a good number of pilots. Here's a list of a few occasions where I have benefited from my friends in high places:

So far I have only flown with friends twice, but they were both a blast. The first time I flew with a friend, he took me up in a Cessna 172 (common training airplane) on a cross country flight for about an hour. He handled the takeoffs and landings, but I flew most of the rest and I'd say I did pretty well. We flew from Inyokern Airport (IYK) to Lone Pine airport (O26) which was really cool because I have driven through Lone Pine quite a few times and never had any idea that there was an airport there. I would definitely like to take some of my friends who live near IYK on that same trip some day.

My other OPA flying experience was in a Pitts S-2, which is a very high performance aerobatic bi-plane. I don't even know where to begin with that one. That was probably the coolest thing I have ever done. We pulled 6 g's and -1.5 g's doing loops, rolls, spins, and other maneuvers I can't even remember the names of. That flight probably wasn't as applicable to my PPL training since that is a very different plane from the ones I would train in but it was loads of fun. It was also a very humbling experience because while my friend did let me fly some of the maneuvers, I needed a lot more help than I expected. I don't know that I'll ever fly a Pitts regularly, but that flight did inspire me to eventually get an aerobatic endorsement some day so that I can do some of that stuff in a Citabria or other lower performance aerobatic airplane.

In terms of supplies, I do have one friend who lent me a few weather books (which I haven't read...) and a CFI friend who is lending me a nice headset. Unfortunately my CFI friend is a full time air traffic controller and just teaches a little on the side (mostly helps with night training I believe), so he isn't positioned to be my primary instructor, but I am very grateful that he is lending me a headset and that he has given me some free advice.

The most important way that my friends have influenced my flight training, however, is all of the advice. Any time I have a question, there are plenty of people I can ask and I really value their opinions. You'll want to make sure you get multiple sources for any sort of opinion based answer, so its nice to have plenty of people you can ask. My plan for flight training has been shaped by the advice that I've received and it has positioned me to go into my training with a much better idea of what I want. It was also instrumental in my preparation for the FAA written knowledge exam.

How to win friends and influence people

I wouldn't say that I'm an introvert, but I'm also far from being an expert at making friends. I would say I'm pretty comfortable being alone and don't always go out of my way to meet new people. I can be a little awkward at times as well, so I'm probably not your best source for learning how to make friends in general, however, out of the friends that I do make, they are almost all interested in aviation.

So I can't tell you how to make friends, but I can give a few tips on how to find other aviation people. Here are just a few ideas:

• Hang out at the airport (chat with the receptionist at the flight school, eat at the airport restaurant, attend fly-ins, or just sit and watch planes takeoff and land)
• Look for social media groups in your area
• If you go to ground school with other people (as opposed to self study ground school) then get to know the other students, and perhaps create a mailing list so you can all keep in touch afterward.
• Just talk about airplanes with whoever you are around; you will be surprised at who says "oh yeah, I'm actually a pilot too" or "hey, you should talk to Jim, he flies all the time". If you're as annoying as I am and talk about airplanes to anyone who will listen, it usually doesn't take long to find the other pilots or prospective pilots hiding around.

If all else fails, shoot me an email at thestingypilot@gmail.com and I'll be your friend 😁

Happy flying my friends!

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 tothestingypilot@gmail.com and I will try to address them in a future post.