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 re