Sport Pilot Talk

Hey Everyone,

I'm a new member here and hail from San Diego, CA. Currently saving up to fly; I want to get my PPL but will probably start with my sport pilot certificate.

I live pretty close to Montgomery Field (MYF). Saving up now and looking for a flight instructor & flight club to help guide me on my journey.

One question I have is, how many "discovery" flights should I do? Just enough to find the right instructor?

Glad to be a part of the community; looks like a bunch of passionate aviation enthusiasts.

Cheers,

Mark

aviatordrool wrote: One question I have is, how many "discovery" flights should I do? Just enough to find the right instructor?

I can only speak for my own flight school, of course, but as I see it, the purpose of a Discovery Flight is to get you enthused about beginning flight training. Sounds like you're already there, so the only advantage of doing multiple Discovery Flights is to save some money logging more hours.

You should bear in mind that most flight schools do Discovery Flights at cost (or less). The purpose of a loss leader is to attract new customers, not to give them cheap flight training. So, a flight school will probably have a strict limit on the number of Discovery Flights you can take. But, even if they don't, the extra hours logged may be of limited benefit to you. All such flights are essentially the same lesson - you can't expect successive ones to advance you through the curriculum. So, though five Discovery Flights might let you log five hours of air time, it's meaningless. You would not have five hours of flight experience, just one hour of experience, five times over.

The way to assess a flight instructor is to take a real lesson with him or her. Or two, or three. After that, if your learning style and the instructor's teaching style are mismatched, it's time to find another instructor. You can't determine the fit during a Discovery Flight, which is essentially just a marketing tool.

Good luck with your flight instruction, and enjoy!