Private Pilot

We start with a discovery flight so you can find out whether you actually like it before spending real money. If you do, the next two errands are yours: book an AME for a third class medical, and apply for your student pilot certificate through IACRA - I will walk you through both, they are easier than they sound.

For your first real lesson, bring a logbook, your ID, sunglasses, and a headset if you have one. If you do not, borrow mine until you know what you like.

This is where you learn to actually fly the airplane. The four fundamentals first - straight and level, turns, climbs, descents - then slow flight, stalls, and the ground reference work that makes you comfortable maneuvering close to the pattern.

Then we live in the traffic pattern for a while. Takeoffs and landings, crosswinds, go-arounds, and engine failures until they stop being scary and start being procedure. You will sit a pre-solo written exam, and when your landings are consistently yours and not mine, I will get out and send you around the pattern alone.

Now the airplane becomes transportation. You will plan real flights on paper - winds, fuel, weight and balance, airspace, alternates - then go fly them and find out how the plan survives contact with an actual afternoon in Arizona. Pilotage and dead reckoning first, then the GPS and VORs on top.

We do dual cross-countries together, then I turn you loose on your own, including the long one. Night flying lives in this phase too, and it is usually everybody's favorite - the valley lit up and the air completely still.

We polish every maneuver until it sits inside ACS tolerances on demand, not just on a good day. Alongside that we drill the oral - systems, regulations, weather, aeronautical decision making - the way a DPE actually asks it, scenario first.

Before I sign anything you sit a full mock checkride with me, so the real one is the second time you have answered those questions. Then you get the endorsement, we book the examiner, and you go be a pilot.