Commercial Pilot's Licence

Anneli Christian-Phillips

• Publisher: Crowood
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781847975423
• Topic: Technologie et ingénierie
• Subtopic: Aviation

Many of those embarking, or considering embarking, on commercial pilot's training have little idea of what they will have to do, as far as flying training is concerned, to get the licence. The Commercial Pilot's Licence aim to dispel some common misconceptions and to tell you in an easy and user-friendly way what you need to know to get a JAA CPL and become a better pilot. Much of the literature available to CPL students has much to say about what you will have to fly but not how to fly it. This book, by contrast, offers real practical advice on the lesson content and how to fly the manoeuvres, rather than just a list of what you are expected to know at the end of it.Topics covered include: Things to consider before you start; The CPL syllabus sections; What happens during the test; After the test. An easy, user-friendly guide to all you need to know to get a JAA Commercial Pilot's Licence and become a better pilot.Offers practical advice on the lesson content and concentrates on how to fly the manoeuvres.Illustrated with 26 colour photographs.Anneli Christian-Phillips is a commercial pilot with over three thousand hours' instructional experience.

1 BEFORE YOU START YOUR CPL

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

Leonardo da Vinci

If you are still reading this, then congratulations: you are one step nearer to gaining your CPL. You have probably already come through quite a journey of a PPL, hours building and those infamously tough CPL or Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence (ATPL) exams, and so hopefully you are ready to start your commercial training.

If, however, you have just finished your PPL, or you haven’t yet finished your hour building, or not yet selected an ATO for your training, this chapter contains some advice before we get to the really fun bits of the actual flying.

Firstly, let’s talk about hour building. If you have not yet got the 100 hours as Pilot in Command (PIC) that you need to be issued with a CPL, or the 150 total hours needed to start the course, you should think about the hour building you need to do and come up with a sensible plan for it. If you just muck about with no structure or spend it mostly in the circuit or your local area, you could find that you will be using the first few hours of your CPL course re-learning the basics, forcing the instructor to get rid of the bad flying habits you have allowed to develop. This will cost you dearly in time and money, and will certainly mean more hours needed to finish the course. For example, I spend a lot of time re-teaching students how to trim and reminding them to look out of the window, scanning the sky for traffic from wing tip to wing tip – because there was no one sitting next to you nagging you to do it properly while you are hours building alone – as well as brushing students up on their sloppy RT calls.

There are various ways to hour build, but ideally the end result should be that it enhances your flying ability, command experience and general competence – as well as being fun. A major decision can be whether to do your hour building in the UK or abroad.

The pros and cons of hour building outside the UK are as follows:

✓ Possibly all round good weather

✓ The experience of flying abroad

✓ Usually cheaper than the UK

✗ Not being able to see the school before you sign up or the aircraft or the facilities before you go

✗ Being away from home

✗ Lack of familiarity with UK airspace, RT procedures and so on when you return

✗ Maybe having to fly a few extra hours to get you up to speed on UK procedures

The pros and cons of hour building in the UK are as follows:

✓ Getting a good grounding in UK airspace and RT procedures

✓ Access to the schools to visit for advice

✓ Excellent standard of training

✓ Easy access to instructors for advice and guidance

✗ Potentially inconsistent weather

✗ Generally more expensive unless you buy hours in bulk

If you decide to go abroad for your hour building, it can’t be emphasized enough that you could save a lot of time and money on the CPL course if you ‘save’ about 5 hours of your hour building for the UK and, more specifically, the airfield where you will do your CPL training. Get hold of a CPL instructor (not literally!), offer to buy them a hearty breakfast and pick their brains on how and what they teach in the course, what advice they can give you and what they are looking for.

Get useful information from them such as navigation routes, airfields, school-specific aircraft internal and external checks, the course notes and so on, so you can start to incorporate it into your last few hours of solo flying. I would even go as far as recommending that you get yourself booked in for a lesson with a CPL instructor prior to the start of your CPL course, so you can ask for their honest feedback as to the quality of your flying and what you could do to improve. It may be an additional expense but it is well worth it.

Top Tip

Try to find some friends or fellow PPLs to go with you when hour building. It will be so much more enjoyable as very few people enjoy flying on their own, and you can share the costs of accommodation, food and landing fees. It is a bizarre fact, but you will often find that friends and indeed comparative strangers are more likely to want to come flying with you rather than your family, so don’t be too disappointed if your relatives won’t come with you.

If you haven’t yet selected an ATO for your CPL, you should give a lot of thought to the following points. You must identify all of your own and the training school’s requirements, your own current qualifications and experience, and so on, before making any decision about any signing up and parting with your money:

• How much does the course cost, and does the price include approach fees, test fees, landing fees, any fuel surcharges, and ground school?

• What time of the year do you plan to start your training? Training in the summer is going to be better from a continuity point of view, as you won’t be interrupted by bad weather.

• What type of aircraft will you fly. Will you stay on a complex type for the whole course, or will you start on a basic aircraft first and then move on to the complex type?

• Will you work full-time and fly part-time, or will you train full time? Don’t underestimate how tiring the training will be and how much studying you will have to do. Flying part-time at weekends will always increase the amount of time and money spent getting to test standard compared with training on a full-time basis.

• Are you required to pay up-front or pay as you go? Will you get a discount if you pay up front?

• Are there any financial issues or other problems at home that may cause you to be distracted and unable to concentrate fully?

• Will you stay on site or will you have to commute a long distance to get to the school?

• Lastly, are there any medical or licence issues that need to be resolved with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) before you start the course?

A good place to start your search for an ATO is the CAA website, www.caa.co.uk. It lists all the schools in the UK and abroad approved by the CAA to conduct the CPL course. The CPL is one of the most valued of all licences and should be what you are aiming to hold. If you don’t get an EASA FCL licence to start with – that is, if you go to a non-EASA country to do your training – you may well have to convert it when you start job hunting. The re-training to upgrade to an EASA licence is ‘as required’ as there are no specific or minimum hours required.

It makes sense to compare the course requirements and other details of the schools you are interested in, and to visit them – some will have open days that will formally introduce you to the school, the facilities and the instructors. Also try to arrange a visit on a normal working day so you can get the feel of the place. Don’t be afraid to talk to students who are training there and instructors that work there, as most of them will be more than happy to give you advice and share their experiences.

In addition to the specific items listed above, issues to think about are: aircraft and instructor availability; pass rates; number of aircraft available; accommodation availability; any additional or hidden costs; and on-site aircraft maintenance – a school that has its own maintenance facility on-site is a useful commodity. Also ask about links to airlines and the number of CPL/IR students that get airline jobs. Don’t be afraid to ask whether you will have to ‘pay as you go’, in instalments or even the whole amount up front. Ask about any discounts for payments up front. Do bear in mind, though, that ATOs can and do go bankrupt, so be sensible about any ‘too good to be true’ deals.

Try to avoid believing everything you read on pilot internet forums. The comments posted range from the really useful to the not so useful, and then to the downright biased; the latter usually from individuals who have a grudge against certain parts of the aviation world. However, don’t disregard them completely and if you read something you aren’t sure about, ask another pilot. An interesting question to ask an ATO is how they feel about and react to any negative feedback. But the best way to get a balanced view is to talk to as many people as possible about how and where they did their training: what did they enjoy and what do they wish they had done differently?

You must keep in mind that most people will go over the 25 hours to complete the course, so you should realistically budget for at least an extra 3 hours as well as extra for the approach/landing fees. You will also need to budget for any in-school 170A test fees, changes in VAT and/or fuel surcharges. Lastly, the cost of the CPL skill test is, in early 2012, £780 (and that amount will only ever go up), not including the hire of the aircraft and landing fees. Add all these up and you don’t want to find yourself in the situation where you are ready for the test and don’t have the money to do it.

It may seem a strange thing to put in this book, but do not get too excited or get your hopes up about the CPL course being the easiest or best flying of your life (so far). It may seem as if you have already spent a long time and a lot of money getting this far, and you have probably made some huge personal sacrifices along the way to start the CPL course itself, and looking forward to it is what got you through the ATPL exams ... but believe it or not, the course can be a disappointment for some. There is a huge but also a subtle difference in what is expected from you as a professional pilot compared with the flying you did with your PPL instructo...