Becoming a pilot is not for everyone. It takes a healthy mix of different skills and ressources to pull it all together. When I started instructing I had the firm and innocent belief that anyone who put in enough effort and perseverance could become a pilot. Over the years flying with hundreds of different individuals of varying age, I changed my mind.

If learning to fly (an awesome project!) is on your mind for 2025, let’s go through some characteristics I found key to beat the odds and get a permit (RPP) or licence (PPL) against the 70-80% who will abandon their flight training.

Money

Let’s start with the big bone of the matter, and be blatantly honest: flying is expensive. If you ask around, pilots who obtained their privilege 10, 15, 20 or more years ago will most likely be out of touch on the reality of today’s flight training and how much flying costs have risen. Nowadays, it is easily $350 and more per hour for renting an airplane with the qualified flight instructor. The national average is 70-80 hours for a PPL. Hopefully 15-25 of those hours will be solo, without an instructor on board, with the goal of practising exercices solo for proficiency and confidence before the flight test.

You also need to add cost for ground time with your flight instructor. Extra valuable time which is a must and a great way to save money by making the lesson in the airplane more efficient and useful. If you don’t know what you are going to do in the airplane, it will be a costly lesson. An airplane is a noisy classroom. You can do the math from those numbers.

Where you chose to train will also have an impact.

How many aircraft are available? If one breaks or needs maintenance, how many others are available to keep your training consistent?

How many flight instructors are on staff? Flight instructing is often a stepping stone career for pilots to build hours and move on the career ladder. Hopefully they will be professional and give their best while in that important role. But when they move on, you will be passed on to another flight instructor. This can mean extra hours for you.

How far is the practice area? If you train in a bigger city aerodrome, chances are you will need to fly 10-20 minutes round-trip to be able to practice certain exercices. We cannot do air exercices right above a city center. This will impact flight training hours, hence costs.

Time

It is a huge investment of time. I would say conservatively that you need to budget 15-20 hours per week if you want to stay within that average (70-80h). For better retention of knowledge and skills learned, it is ideal to fly 2-3 times, or more, per week. One flight lesson is usually 2 hours, plus commute, and all the reading assignments and homeworks required prior to each lesson. Before first solo is when you can expect the heaviest workload. After, it depends on the lesson, and your information retention. Any pause in your flight training will most likely incur review, hence extra costs.

If you have a family, they will need to be extra understanding during this time which would typically last 12 – 18 months if all goes smoothly without too many hiccups. Work schedule needs to be adaptable. If you regularly need to do long hours, travel for work, or are too stressed out with your duties, it might be wiser to delay the start of your flight training until you can commit the time and energy to that project. Otherwise, expect longer to complete the training, and more costs.

Size and weight

Airplanes are built in different sizes for sure, but not all are best for learning to fly, affordable for flight schools or within your budget. The most popular aircraft in Canada is the Cessna 172M. You might like to sit in one first, and ask the availability of instructor sizes before commencing if you are very tall and heavier than 250 lbs. You need to be able to reach and move the controls freely, and allow the weight of an instructor on board. Likewise if you are really short, although this is a problem more easily remedied with cushions. (Being 5’3″, that’s what I’ve been doing with the majority of airplanes I’ve flown so far.)

Health – Medical certificate

Unless you’ve got no health issues, or no doubts about your medical condition, it is advisable to consult with an aviation doctor to obtain you medical certificate before investing yourself in flight training lessons. Even more so before buying an airplane. You can find one nearest to you here.

For example, any medications will require some explaining. If you are really into reading (which is a great plus for you!) you can learn more about the medical requirements here.

I have seen a few who started flight training and had to wait a long time to have their medical cleared, or were asked further testing or confirmation from specialists, or just got their request denied. This can take a long time, like a year, so start the process as soon as possible.

Reading, and learning

A lot of learning is necessary for safe flying. A mean a lot. I tell people at the beginning of flight training that it is like drinking from a fire hose. To me, it is extremely rewarding and satisfying, but like anything worth doing, it requires hard work.

You will be required to do a lot of reading to learn about laws, meteorology, navigation and general knowledge such as how engines and carburetor works. Books or online ground school through hours of videos will cover that. Your flight instructor will cover the gaps, and glue all this studying together to ensure you grasp the necessary and vital information to safely fly an airplane.

Personality

If you are an adrenaline junky, this will be an exhilarating adventure, as long as you are not the cowboy type. Too big an ego in aviation will stop you one way or another. Through flight training, you will go through rough patches where you might just not understanding something. Learning to say I don’t know this or I am struggling with that is to be learned sooner rather than later. If your flight instructor is doing a good job, they will earn your trust and see how to help you. Don’t let your ego hold you back or slow you down.

If you hide your too big ego long enough, and hide what you don’t know, well, an airplane is trying to kill you so you need to learn as much as you can on how to avoid it and enjoy as long as possible the wonderful fun of flying.

Perseverance and strength of character are distinguishable traits for successful students. Do you easily get discouraged faced with adversity? It will most likely not be only smooth sailing, your strength of character and your desire to persevere will be key to your success. Some part of your training will be more difficult, frustrating, can you handle it and keep charging ahead?

Aircraft availability, flight instructors availability, weather, your schedule, etc. are real hurdles.

But… I promise you it is worth it!

Math

I see this question often on the Internet. Do I need to be good in math? I don’t think so. You don’t need to be a super math whiz kid, but you will need to do quick mental calculations such as 21 divided by 3 times 2. Or 40 divided by 8. All while flying an airplane, and listening on the radio, and more. On the ground, things are smoother as you’ve got more time, brain power available, and access to a calculator. Most students get around to being decently good at this within that 70-80 hours of training.

Multi-tasking

One thing I see students most struggle with is multi-tasking. It is a contributing factor, in my opinion, to higher flight training time. Amongst the things you need to juggle with while flying an airplane includes: navigating (first using a paper map then most likely a GPS of some kind), radio (a big challenge for most!), keeping a vigilant lookout for other traffic in the air, managing distractions by passengers (or the flight instructor who is training you to manage those distractions once licensed).

These become fairly easy with experience, but then we add managing emergencies which throws a whole new perspective on flying an airplane (especially if it’s on fire – real or simulated!).

Do you manage workload and distractions well?

Learning to prioritize and analyse situations are important.

Cutting corners, anti-authority

I have seen some students scare the bejesus out of me with their view of how flight training should be conducted, although they didn’t have much experience yet. They read a lot and thought they were smarter and could cut corners. Please don’t do this. Sooner or later, this will kill you or worse, kill someone who trusted you in an airplane and you cared about. Flying is a privilege and should be treated with respect.

Many of the regulations and flight training requirements were written and built on blood. If you like to do things quickly and stretch your dollars by cutting down on proper training, flying is not for you. Sonner or later you will scare your self, if you don’t straight out die from it.

I know this sound harsh, but I have read lots of accidents reports to support these statements, and experienced that this is still a thing in 2024. If I haven’t convinced you, watch this video.

A good pilot never stops learning. This is a phrase you will hear often. It is so true. Whatever we don’t use, we tend to lose. We need to keep on learning, flex those brain and body muscles to stay sharp flying an airplane. Every pilot is given a bag of luck and a bag of experience. The trick is to fill your bag of experience before your bag of luck runs out.

If you have started flight training already, or finished, any other thoughts on what it takes? Or if you left your learning journey, why did you?

I hope I will see you around an aerodrome in 2025!

On an ending note, to give a good laugh, I’ve asked ChatGPT to make an image of flight training in a Cessna 172. After a few tweaks… this was the result. How many things wrong in this image can you spot?