19 Steps to ATPL

The cheapest route to the flight deck from 0 hours by Steph: 

1) Buy a pilot logbook from Pooleys, Transair or Flight Store (they’re about 25cm x 15cm and around €/£10). Log your flights exactly to the minute and don’t round up or down as it will make life easier in the long run. (Steps 1- 9 *should* take 1-2 years). I say should so you experience flying and your club in all weathers, seasons, icing or not, and you develop a pattern for regularly attending rather than bashing it out in a few weeks. It’s also cheaper to spread it out as the ‘regulars’ will be offered the freeby flights to maintenance or find someone to backseat with.

2) Call a local flying club and ask if you can book a lesson (30 mins/ 1 hour whatever you can afford). Ask them to teach you something (not a sightseeing tour)! Put 3 hours in your logbook.
Apply for a credit card, use it VERY occasionally and pay it off in full.

 

3) If you’re 100% committed to spend money on airplanes get your class 2 Aviation medical and ask them to do a soft check on all the class 1 items. If you can afford it go straight in with a class 1 medical as it’s better to know earlier if a health condition will rule out a career.

 

 

4) Before every flight lesson do a 1 hour armchair ‘flight’ at home (in a chair/ in the bath/ on a walk). This is where you sit still and mentally go through EVERYTHING you expect to do in the flight. From starting up the plane to the final checklist OFF BY HEART. This is not the time to check what it says in the manual or your study notes, this is as if you are really flying, even try all the radio calls even if you are messing up.

5) Then after your ‘armchair flight’, check your notes to see what you missed or where you messed up. As your flights go on, incorporate more complex procedures or some emergency items that you have already had the chance to practice.

6) With around 6 hours logged ask your flight school to start preparing for the Air Law exam. You need to pass this before you fly solo.

7) Go solo! (PS - If you loved it but found it too hard, stressful, time consuming, whatever you can totally enjoy your solo flight and give up here as it only gets more expensive.) At least you have your log book to leave on the coffee table for guests to look at.

8) Study for and pass all the other exams - there are around 7 or 8 multi-choice papers and make sure you also have your class 1 or 2 aviation medical.
Do well in the ground school exams as they are the basis for everything we do in the job. Also, don’t forget to enjoy it, take pictures, write the things that happen and stories in your logbook, put photos in your logbook and make it a great thing to one day show your future employer. It’s hard work, yes but it never gets easier than this, even years in and fully commercially qualified the sim sessions and studying can be tough sometimes - so yes enjoy it!

9) Continue all the training and get your UK/ EASA PPL (European Private Pilot's Licence). You need a minimum of 45 hours in the logbook for this. Don’t do shorter / smaller licenses as they’re harder to upgrade.

10) Steps 10-13 can take 4-8 years! Book in with the flying club every 3 weeks and fly the plane. I worked 8 hours a week in the flying club to get a reduced price on the aircraft hire! Also, if you can find someone who owns a plane at a little private airfield (worth doing some investigating), you can ask them if you can buy your own insurance share and fly the aircraft for the cost of the fuel plus a little bonus - this will save you thousands of euros/ pounds. For me it was more fun and easier to do a few shorter flights to save some cash to be able to do a longer ‘trip’ away with a buddy where we each flew one leg.

11) It’s great if you can buddy up with another PPL so that you fly and pay for one way (and your lovely, qualified radio assistant pays for and flies the way home whilst you help them with the radio and map holding). It’s important to fly at least once every 4 weeks so that the club always let you fly solo. Otherwise, you need a check ride and that eats into the P1 time you need.
Start to request increases on your credit card limit but don’t use it for big flying yet.

12) With 120-140 hours total time, register with Bristol Ground School (the best in my opinion) and plan to sit all the ATPL ground school exams. It’s a few thousand pounds. You won’t have a social life for 9 months and should be prepared to lock yourself away in a shed every night to knock them out as quick as humanly possible. Do them in 2 (or 3) sittings. Don’t fail any!
At this point I was applying for scholarships like crazy too. There are a lot out there but often disguised as Operations jobs with smaller AOC operators. Anyway you will find them in the Flight Training newspaper at your flying club and you can find all the CAA AOC holders on the UK CAA website.

 

 

13) Do a night rating in amongst the hour building, you don’t need to hurry it and there’s no exam. I was eventually sponsored by a cargo operator from this point. After I left the airline I did have to pay back half of the costs hence I know how much it cost and have a good idea how long it will take others without a scholarship to afford it. The order below is identical to my own training.

14) Once you have 100 hours P1 AND a total time of 175 hours in the logbook, plus a 300km solo cross-country flight you can start your CPL.
From this point on you need to not be sloppy with your planning and procedures and armchair flying is everything to pass in minimal hours and therefore minimal costs!! This is the most important thing to make the license cheap.
My scholarship emphasised that it was expected I would pass in minimum hours so this method helped me.

 

15) If you haven’t already, start applying for scholarships - you will find most info on them in the newspapers in flying clubs, usually at the bottom of the page near the back! Additionally, many smaller Air Operator Certificate (AOC) holders (look on the EASA/CAA website to find them) will recruit ‘Operations officers’ or ‘photographers’ with a PPL. This just means they recruit into an office job to check you out before they offer to pay for some of your flight training! Apply for these jobs. I worked as a Cadet Pilot in Ops for a cargo airline and was sponsored to fully qualified.

16) The Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) is 25 hours in the same aircraft you’ve been flying, shop around and don’t put down all the cash up front in case they go bust. Plan to finish it quite intensively in 2-3 months. After this you can apply for commercial pilot jobs in small aircraft like - experience flights, ferrying for maintenance, aerial photography, etc. Banner towing is dangerous so be cautious.

16) Now, with 200 hours and a CPL it’s time to start the Multi Engine Instrument Rating (ME IR), the most expensive bit! Start the IR in the simulator, then do some of the IR flying in the single engine aircraft, squeeze in a multi engine rating mid way through and then finish your IR on a multi engine aircraft.
Borrow money from friends and family and last resort put it on that credit card but make sure you bloody well finish it and pass.

17) With a multi engine CPL IR you are a qualified pilot and can start applying to airlines. Any airline that recruits you will put you through a Multi-crew Cooperation Course (MCC) and some might also put you through a Jet Orientation Course (JOC). Again, armchair flying will help to pass in minimum hours). Ask to have it bonded, rather than pay for it, but if you must pay for it put it on a as long a loan as you can, as you will eventually get a salary and can re-finance it to a lower interest to pay it off quicker anyway.

18) Write handwritten letters to all the smaller turbo-prop operators to fly planes that are genuinely fun to fly. A big shiny jet in a passenger airline is great and safe, but I 100% recommend first getting some flying experience in an aircraft that you really have to ‘handle’ to fly. Flying cargo was a brilliant experience that I will never regret.

19) With between 500- 1500 hours most airlines would consider your application for a jet job, and to be honest you can apply to fly most things, wherever they are recruiting.