Sure, flying yourself in your own airplane is a good way to travel, to get from one place to another. It's a way to further a business, to be more flexible and responsive to customers and opportunities. It's also a good way to have fun, which is the reason most people learn to fly. But a consequence of our modern, efficient, lean-and-mean society is that fun, especially if it involves some degree of risk (no matter that it is well-managed minimum risk) has become something of an "F word."
The first bit of evidence that personal aviation had stepped across the line from being mostly about having a lot of fun, to something that should have a more practical image, emerged when Cessna started advertising the 150 as a "business" airplane. The ad depicted two people in business attire climbing into the new Cessna 150 Commuter. Uh huh. The 150 is a fun flying airplane and a proven trainer, but a business traveler?
Cessna was not the cause of the change in aviation's mind-set. Its ads merely reflected society's guilt-driven desire for everything to have a serious, rational purpose.
Flying was, and still is, fun. The only thing that changed was the mind-set. With that change came a sharper focus on the money being spent. Learning to fly and buying an aircraft have never been inexpensive, but today people have many more choices on how to spend their discretionary dollars. It can be difficult to rationalize spending hard-earned money on the fun of flying, especially if your spouse or family doesn't share your enthusiasm.
The expense of flying is relative. It depends on what you compare it with. Compared with hiking, flying is expensive, at least until you add in the cost of expensive hiking clothes and accessories, and travel costs to get to hiking destinations. Compared to open-water pleasure-boat cruising, or Rocky Mountain snow-skiing trips and condominiums, flying is not unusually expensive. Which way you see it - too costly for the reward, or money well spent on a unique and fulfilling activity - depends on your mind-set.
But if you've always wanted to fly, give yourself a break. Give learning to fly a try. You don't have to enroll in a start-to-finish, first-flight-to-FAA-checkride course, and you don't have to pay for everything up front. In aviation, you can pay as you go, one lesson at a time.
You can start with an introductory lesson. If you get an intro flight card from GA Team 2000 (call 888-BE-A-PILOT), your first taste of how much fun flying can be will cost you $35 at a participating school. That's not a lot of money.
If you enjoy your intro flight and want to take the next step without committing to a complete training program, sign up for a solo package. A growing number of flight schools offer an affordable flight training package that takes you from first flight to every pilot's most important flight - the one you make all by yourself. If a school doesn't offer such a package, many of them would be happy to "create" one, if you ask.
If you want to take the next step after first solo, you can continue your training and earn your recreational certificate (see the article on it in this issue), which allows you to fly with a passenger and take short cross country flights. It's the quickest way to start enjoying the benefits of fun flying. If you find you want more, such as flying at night or the flexibility and ability to fly to larger, towered airports, you can get the training it takes to become a private pilot, and perhaps after that, an instrument-rated pilot.
That's the beauty of flying. The new things you learn build on what you already know - they don't replace it. Learning new things about flying isn't like buying a set of golf clubs of better quality, it's like adding more memory to your computer. Rather than doing the same thing with new tools, learning enables you to do more new things.
Mind-set can be a person's best friend, or his worst enemy. The choice is yours. If you believe something to be harder than it is, it will be. If you think something is more complex than it really is, it will be. But if you give yourself a break and at least give your dreams a try, you might be surprised to discover how achievable they are. And one more thing. If someone asks why you want to learn to fly, give the real answer, the answer that's always been correct. Because flying is fun.
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