Exposed: 6 Devastating Mistakes to Avoid in Flight Training

Hi guys! My name is Nick Smith, founder and creator of Part Time Pilot and I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you my story of how I became a private pilot and how  I found out and realized what the most important thing a student pilot can do to be successful and achieve their dream of becoming a private pilot and what that is, is to always be one step ahead mentally of the aircraft and always be prepared that’s another way to say it and that’s very vague. So the best way for me to explain that in details for your whole student pilot journey is to tell you my story because I pretty much did what not to do and so  I think it’ll be very valuable for you guys to hear my story and pretty much why  I started Part Time Pilot because  I found so many things that could change in the pilot training industry and there was an opportunity for me to provide that for people. So let’s get to it. So about six or seven years ago  I decided  I wanted to be a private pilot. Probably about eight years ago actually but six to seven years ago,  I got started. I googled how to become a private pilot  I found that I need to be in a ground school and  I need to do flight training so what I did is  I started calling up some flight training facilities asking around for prices and I think a lot of you guys can relate with that right. So I just found the cheapest one they said they had a ground school too and I could get started with a flight instructor right away. So, I started doing ground school. I paid 700 for an in-person ground school. I had to drive you know 30 to 45 minutes from my house in traffic after work to go to these ground school lessons two times a week. And then, I started flight training about once a week with an instructor. Now my instructor was like 75 years old there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s a great guy and everything, but when I told him that I was an aerospace engineer.  I think he and after my first flight kind of he saw that I had a good feel of the aircraft. I think he thought “well I don’t have to do much to teach this person” and  I think  I got a little short-handed with that and  I was soloing in under 10 hours. I think it was like eight hours or something, he had me soloing and I remember thinking in the back of my head like this seems a little too soon. I don’t know like,  I was fine with it because  I didn’t want to pay a lot of money but it seemed a little quick and at the same time, like I said, I was doing ground training.  I was going through those lessons so  I had paid 700 dollars for ground training.  I was driving an hour or two hours to commute to work and then  I was driving that time to the ground lessons and  I was playing for flight training one to two sessions per week and quickly the money  I’d saved up about a few thousand dollars was gone and now I was paying paycheck to paycheck so now it was hard to fly multiple times a week and  I sort of hit.  I started to slow down a little bit on that but  I finished ground school and that’s when I actually got a new job in Southern California. This was up in Seattle Washington and so I decided to move in the middle of my flight training but what I did before I moved is, I called some places where  I was moving San Diego, California.  I called some flight schools and  I said “Hey look! You know I am started. I’m doing this,  I have good momentum,  I want to keep it going. What can you do to to keep this going? Am I gonna have to redo everything all those types of questions and each one of them?” and  I found it was basically the first one.  I called the cheapest place and they said “Yeah, we’re gonna have you you know right away, you’ll just pick up where you left off and and you’ll go from there.” But what happened is,  I had moving costs unexpected moving costs,  I had to get acclimated with my new job get that paycheck going the cost of living was higher in California, obviously and so it took me a while to have a little bit of extra cash and kind of be ready mentally to start that up again. So it took me maybe about a month to start that up again and when I came in, even though they said  I would just get right back to it, the instructor they had they had selected for me wanted to see me start from the scrap from scratch. So basically, I had to start all over again. Now,  I remember  I told you that  I thought  I had progressed pretty quickly so in the back of my mind  I was like, this is going to be more expensive but you know what this might be safer this might be better for me in the long run. So  I decided to do it so. I get back through my 10 hours with this instructor and then now  I’m paying paycheck to paycheck again so I’m only able to fly like once a week or so. And then my instructor goes and gets a commercial job. So, I have a new instructor. This next instructor again kind of has me redo some lessons which is kind of annoying, starting to get kind of annoying at this point. But  I’m not a confrontational guy, so  I kind of just took it and continued on with my training and this instructor was,  I didn’t pick this instructor.  I just kind of again, I’m not a confrontational guy, I need to speak up more sometimes and  I should have said you know this instructor’s not working out because this guy, all he did was just yell at me and it made flying which was fun before, that start to be really stressful and again, I’m paying paycheck to paycheck. And now I’ve redone a bunch of lessons and  I’m looking at, I’m starting to think “Okay, I spent thousands of dollars that I probably shouldn’t have already uh maybe two three thousand dollars and then that’s when this instructor got a commercial job and it was kind of a blessing because this last instructor I think the flight training facility they said let’s give this guy the best instructor because they can see that I started to get frustrated. So they hand me off to this last instructor and he was awesome. He really was. And that’s right! When about the summer in San Diego hit and I was having to do my solo cross-country flights and the solo cross-country flights here, they have you go to the desert so they you fly to like Yuma palm springs, stuff like that and in the summer it gets really hot and the temperature limits on these airplane are like 110 degrees or so, but there’s also marine layer in San Diego. It hits 110 degrees in the desert by like 11 a.m or even sooner 10 a.m but the marine layer in San Diego doesn’t clear until about 9 10 a.m. So there’s it was really hard to find a day to get my cross-country flights where I could take off without the marine layer land in Yuma, in the desert under the 110 degree temperature limit. And then come back and land, so my solo cross-country flights ended up taking me about six months to complete. I tried all summer and the whole time  I’m paying paycheck to paycheck so I can just afford about one flight per week and because  I’m  doing my solo cross-countries, I have to stay solo current so when I was going weeks without being able to fly that solo cross-country, I would have to fly in the pattern solo to keep my currency and if this didn’t happen because of money or other things that were happening in my life there was a couple times where I had to take a couple weeks off and I really started getting discouraged. Then I had to start flying with my instructor again to build that that currency, that solo currency and get signed off on my solo currency and this flight school also had me do these knowledge tests. So I would have to pay and review them with my instructor before I soloed. So then I had to pay my ground instructor over my flight instructor over and over again for ground training and reviewing these tests. So during that time, I wanted to quit so many times. I was just paying, paying, paying and not making any progress again for six months. I was doing this but luckily thanks to my wife, thanks to supportive people around me, I kept going and finally after about twenty two thousand dollars, I was able to get my solos done and prepare for my checkride and then pass my checkride on the first try. And when it was all said and done, the joy of flying was completely gone and it was just this big ball of stress. So I had built up a lot of credit card debt. So now it wasn’t like I could just go out and fly for fun because again that’s also expensive plus flying just had this very stressful vibe to it now and so I was like, what is even the point of all this? Did I just waste $22000? How can I make my private pilot’s license worth it? I started to think I have all this knowledge. I’m an aerospace engineer,  I’m now a private pilot, and I’ve gone through all these experiences that people should would probably want to know about you know in this day and age with all these influencers and stuff. I decided to make an Instagram and start sharing my experience and sharing the what not to do. So let’s kind of review that in my story of what not to do. The first thing I did wrong was, I did ground training, my ground school at the same time as my flight training because I had a long commute at work and because I was paying paycheck to paycheck. This doing ground training and flight training put a lot of time stress on my time and money so that was mistake number one and this is what I started telling student pilots do your ground training first and then immediately start your flight training. It’s going to be much easier for the time, the money, stress, all that and then you’re also going to be more prepared when you start your flight lessons. So that that’s what happened to me right. Remember when I told you that I was getting through and that my instructor had me soloing because he said oh  I’m an aerospace engineer and look I have pretty good feel all my takeoffs and turns and landings and stuff like that when I was just starting but I felt a little unprepared and it was true because I hadn’t gotten through the ground training yet and when I moved to California and they kind of wanted me to see where I was at and they saw that I had soloed and they saw that when they had me do these more complex lessons and I was rusty and I was behind the aircraft mentally. I started making mistakes that’s when they decided I needed to start all the way over so that cost me right there because I hadn’t done the ground training first and I got too far ahead of myself. I wanted to get it done so quickly that cost me thousands of dollars because when I switched, they realized that and they made me go back and I think that would have happened regardless even with my first instructor who was like 77 years old. I think eventually it would have caught up with me and if he didn’t notice it, I would have made a mistake, I would have busted class bravo airspace, I would have gotten in an accident or I would have eventually failed my checkride multiple times .

The second mistake I made was I decided to move from one state to another, make a big move, change jobs, all that right in the middle of my flight training. So that’s why I tell students you know don’t plan a move. Don’t plan a large vacation, you know, try not to get sick. I know you can’t really handle that but these things that will cause gaps in your training. Again what did i have to do after that? I had to start all the way over again. Again thousands of dollars that I had to redo because I didn’t plan ahead. I didn’t I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t plan ahead. The other thing I did is I didn’t save enough money beforehand. I quickly got through my three four thousand dollars that I had saved up and I was paying paycheck to paycheck. But I was in a new state with a higher cost of living had moving costs all these different things that I didn’t anticipate because of the move that now it made paying paycheck to paycheck even harder and that’s when I started to accrue that credit card debt and it just made things a lot more stressful. If I would have planned ahead a little bit better, I could have avoided that stress.

And the next mistake I made was I didn’t vet my flight schools. I didn’t do research ahead of time. I didn’t vet my flight school or my flight instructor my first instructor after I moved. Remember went on to be a commercial pilot and if I would have sort of vetted that out seeing what their aspirations were understood that you know if it’s a younger pilot, they’re usually going to have those aspirations to move on maybe I should have asked if I could have had the older instructor that has retired from being a pilot and is just now instructing people or instructing full-time. I would have been able to choose that ahead of time and then again I didn’t speak up when the next instructor was this young guy who again same aspirations and even when he made my flight training miserable, I still didn’t speak up. It was just I just got lucky that he moved on eventually and then they finally realized that I needed that best instructor that was going to stick around for the long haul with me. So that was the next mistake I made.

And then Fourth Mistake, also not vetting the flight school I just picked the cheapest hourly rate but what I didn’t realize is they only had a couple airplanes and so they had a lot of students because of the cheap hourly rate. But when things happened like with my cross-country planning with my cross-country solos when I had to cancel a cross-country solo because of again that marine layer and the temperatures, I would try to book another one that week but the schedule would be all booked up .So again, I didn’t plan ahead. I didn’t double book, I didn’t book a backup and I didn’t think that there might be more things than just the cheapest rate. I didn’t realize that that could actually end up costing me when I have gaps in my training that maybe it’s a little bit better to pay ten dollars more an hour for a rental if it means you can always schedule an aircraft.

And then there’s a couple more mistakes I made that I didn’t really mention, but after I finished ground school in Seattle, I didn’t take my FAA written exam. It was so dumb. I should have done it right when that material was fresh but I waited and I waited until I was close to my checkride. And then my instructor and I didn’t I, didn’t know what was required of me I didn’t know you know that I had to take that first to be able to take my checkride and so my instructor when we’re getting close to my check ride he said well you have to you have to take the written first and so I was studying for the check ride so that kind of helped the check right oral that kind of helped the material was kind of fresh but I had to restudy all that material and do those practice tests all over again for the FAA written stuff I already did. If I would have just taken that right after ground school when that material was fresh it’s just so silly I just didn’t again plan ahead. I wasn’t mentally one step ahead of the aircraft the you know the proverbial aircraft in this in this example and then the last thing I did is I didn’t prepare for my lessons until the very end. I didn’t start chair flying and prepping my lessons the night before until the very end when I started getting really frustrated and I finally buckled down and said look if I’m to do this  I’m going to put 100 into this and really buckle down and do this and so I started chair flying my lessons the night before exactly what I thought was going to happen. So mentally in my head when I got to the lessons I had already done it and made the lesson easier and then I also got to the airport early and did all my pre-flight and everything before my instructor got there before what I was doing is I was getting there maybe just five minutes early so my instructor was just watching me pre-flight the aircraft and  I’m paying the instructor to just watch me they call it paying the instructor to drink coffee that was another thing I didn’t realize till late so all these things that I did that I did wrong ended up costing me honestly six to eight thousand dollars that I didn’t need. So originally I had planned for spending twelve to fourteen thousand dollars and that would have been right if I wouldn’t have made all these mistakes but no one told me all these things. No one told me not to do that so that’s why I started Part Time Pilot when I realized being prepared as a student pilot is the number one way you can be successful and being unprepared is the number one way student pilots fail eight out of ten student pilots never become private pilots and it’s because they don’t prepare and so I looked out there and I looked for flight training and ground schools that had that prepared their students with these knowledge and there was bits and pieces out there but no real training facility stuck with the student from the very start said this is how you get signed up this is how you make a Niagara this is how you do your medical exam this is how you look for flight training this is how you ask the right questions and find the right flight instructor this is how you prepare financially this is how you look for scholarships all these things and then teaches you the ground content and has you take the private pilot written exam right before you start your flight training get that out of the way just have that that plan and that flow all put together in one place that can guide you be your complete private pilot mentor there wasn’t a place like that so that’s what i wanted part-time pilot to be and i wanted to teach students educate students about how to be prepared how to plan ahead so that they can have the best chance at success so that’s my story please don’t do what i did please go through our free content go through our five day challenge to become a student pilot and get prepared for your medical exam get started with your ground training and then get our bonus course how to become a private pilot which teaches you how to find the right flight school what questions to ask how to find the right flight instructors what to avoid and how tips to save time and money as well as financial planning advice and then finally our ground school which teaches you to understand the fundamental concepts and not just to pass the fa written and memorize questions and answers but actually prepare you for the real lessons and your check right so that you’re again you’re prepared for your flights you’re mentally one step ahead of the aircraft so like maverick says if you think you’re dead so we don’t want that we want to know that stuff like this we want it to be second nature to us so that flight training is easy to us and we give ourselves the best chance of success the best chance at our achieving our dream of becoming a private pilot thanks for listening to my story please don’t do what I did and listen to what I have to say about what to avoid so that you guys can be successful.