Hi all!
I would like to share a rather unusual experience and add about how to come to the sky and become a pilot. I'll tell you about how I went to the New Zealand village near Hobbiton to sit at the helm and learn to fly.
From what it all began
I am 25, I have been working in the IT industry all my adult life and have not done anything even remotely related to aviation. I have always liked my work, but in recent years my personal development has increasingly lagged behind my professional development, and the rhythm of metropolitan life has motivated me to change my surroundings.
Aviation seemed like a suitable challenge. I never sat at the helm, did not know anything about flying an airplane, understood English poorly and did not have large savings.
Flight courses in Russia did not attract me, since small aviation in our country is in great decline and much has not changed since the days of the USSR. I saw no demand, no supply, no prospects.
I did not want to study in the USA because of the feeling of assembly line. In the States, literally one in three has a pilot license, and some get these licenses in 2-3 weeks, with a standard course duration of 2-3 months. This is even faster than passing on the rights, only ten times more expensive.
I wanted to study in an English-speaking country, so there was little choice in Europe either. Life in the UK seemed to me prohibitively expensive and complicated in terms of visa restrictions.
The choice was New Zealand. An English-speaking and developed country with amazing nature and sympathetic people seemed to me an ideal place to study. I also really loved The Lord of the Rings and knew that the filming of the trilogy took place there. A private school was found 20 kilometers from the Hobbiton film set, not far from the town of Matamata.
English
There were no clear requirements for the English language. It was supposed to be free to understand and talk. Aviation English was not required for a private pilot's license.
I had to get an English course in Moscow. I even managed to find a New Zealand teacher who taught IELTS preparation courses. In two months, we managed to raise the level from 6 to 7.5 and successfully pass interviews with representatives of the school. Formally, a level of at least 6 was required, but I did not have to take the exam itself, although some New Zealand schools require it for admission.
Money
The course of a private pilot on a Cessna 172 aircraft at my school cost about 12 thousand US dollars. This is quite noticeably more expensive than American schools, but much cheaper than Australian ones.
In general, the cost of a PPL private pilot course around the world varies from 7 to 15 thousand dollars, depending on the country of study. The CPL commercial pilot course is significantly more expensive, and the full course from scratch to an ATPL line pilot with the ratings required for work in an airline is about 60 thousand US dollars.
The cheapest is in the Republic of South Africa, where you can learn for 7 thousand. Given the abolition of visas between Russia and South Africa, for many, this option may indeed seem interesting.
There is an opinion that studying to become a private pilot or an amateur pilot is a very doubtful investment, since it will not be possible to directly recoup the costs, because you cannot earn money under this license. You can, of course, go step by step, obtaining license after license as funds become available, but it's just much more expensive and longer.
Many people prefer to save up some money and study at the comprehensive CPL commercial pilot courses, or, if finances allow, directly at the line ATPL.
You need to understand that aviation in terms of career is a very complicated, long and expensive story. Even having received the maximum ATPL clearance with the required ratings and having the theoretical opportunity to work in an airline, no one will hire you so easily without experience. It is good if, after several years of work as an instructor, they are invited to conditional Costa Rica to work as a co-pilot of a regional airline for an extremely modest salary. Everyone understands that every year the US produces thousands of pilots who need to compete and gain hours. There are ways to convert an American license and fly in Russia, but this is also expensive and dreary.
I did not initially consider aviation as a way to make money through flying. With a basic private pilot license, you can seriously diversify your resume, no matter what you do. Aviation provides skills and experience that cannot be valued in money and which will ultimately make you an interesting person and a sought-after specialist.
Visas
At first it seemed to me that New Zealand had an elementary visa, but everything turned out to be not so simple.
A tourist visa is also suitable for a private pilot's license, but firstly, you cannot work on it, and secondly, in order to obtain it, in any case, you will have to transfer the entire amount for study from Russia. In the case of a student visa, everything is much worse, since it will be necessary to transfer not only for studies, but also for several months of housing and various other expenses. The result is outrageously expensive.
The bank assured me that the SWIFT transfer takes several days, but in fact Russia recently passed a law according to which all transactions and transfers are above 600 tr. undergo rigorous checks. They can neither be removed normally nor transferred abroad. The money went for more than a month.
Relocation and housing
I must say that the importance of the issue of housing is greatly underestimated. The fact is that most of the airfields where training takes place are located far from settlements. New Zealand is a prime example of this, our school was located 10 kilometers from the nearest village with a shop and 200 kilometers from a major city.
At school, I was assured that without a car it would be extremely difficult, so all students buy it first. The cost of a car in New Zealand will add several thousand more dollars to the total cost of the course. I managed to arrange a room rental in one of the cabins on the territory of the airfield. This allowed me not to buy a car, but added a lot of other problems.
The main thing is that they had to live in almost complete isolation from civilization. In a few months, I clearly understood that there is no other country in the world that would be more different from Moscow in terms of atmosphere and way of life. In New Zealand, no one is in a hurry to go anywhere, startups do not take root in the country and workaholism is not welcomed.
Shopping has always been a real adventure. Several times I had to walk, which is 10 kilometers one way and 10 kilometers back with packages. Here I would like to thank the New Zealanders who were always ready to give a lift. If you go out on the road, then every second car will stop nearby. That's how I met a lot of wonderful people.
As for housing conditions, the situation here was far from comfortable. The fact is that most of the students of the school were Indians, and Indians are not always clean and consider their housing to be very temporary and unworthy of their attention. My neighbors were guys from India, Malaysia and Tibet. The guys themselves are pleasant and non-confrontational, but still the cultural gap between us is colossal.
Separately, I want to say about the temperature in the house. I arrived in the month of May just before the start of the New Zealand winter. Winter is certainly not like in Moscow, but the sub-zero temperature sometimes lasts a long time. No one in the houses has heard of central heating, so your main friend will be a heater, and the average temperature in the morning is good if it is more than 10 degrees. Excessive use of heaters would have to pay extra and a lot of money to the rent, which, in turn, amounted to 200 New Zealand dollars per week.
I canβt say that the difficulties with living conditions went smoothly, but at the same time I didnβt have a single reason to regret my choice. New Zealand is a completely unique country in its attitude to people and nature. Here all problems are forgotten, you just rejoice every day that you live.
Studies
Before my arrival, I assumed that a large amount of theory awaited me before the practice. Everything turned out exactly the opposite, from the very first day at school and before the start of theoretical classes, I flew off for several weeks.
Practical classes were built as follows: we had an internal online schedule, where the instructor assigned a student to themselves every day. The school specifically forced the instructors to take different students so that no one got used to any one style and did not relax. Most of the instructors were British with fairly difficult English, but there were also New Zealanders.
On the first day, we were given a flight log in which we wrote down our hours and the activity that we practiced during the flight. Before each flight, the instructors held a short briefing, where they told what forces act on the aircraft, what happens in the air and how to act in a given situation. At the end of the briefing, there was a small oral test to check the assimilation of the material, and then we went to the plane and performed pre-flight preparation, after which we sat at the helm and practiced the exercise.
In principle, there is nothing more complicated than school physics in the theory of training for a private pilot, but you need to remember a lot of information. Much falls into a habit immediately, but something needs to be practiced every day.
It seems to me that the training program itself is standardized, and the exams are about the same as in Europe and the USA, except that New Zealand still trains pilots more for the Asian market and is not very popular with the rest.
In our school, we took flight safety very seriously, but at the same time we were forced from the first day to be as independent as possible and not rely on an instructor. On the one hand, during absolutely every pre-flight preparation, I had to pour gasoline into a test tube 11 times and check its quality. On the other hand, I have been self-landing since the second day of class.
As rightly noted , aviation is not only about flights. These are emotions and incredible responsibility. I do not remember that at least once in my life I experienced what happened to experience during the solo piloting of an aircraft. We flew over the Hobbiton film set, flew up to the waterfalls and mountains of the northern island, performed different elements in different weather conditions, and even learned how to pull the plane out of a spin.
I was captivated and inspired by videos and stories about flying, but I absolutely agree that not a single video will convey even a small part of the feeling of a minute at the helm. This will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Source: habr.com