Theory

For your theoretical training and the written exam, we recommend you to learn as much as possible in advance of your training in San Luis Obispo. Once you arrive at our flight school and already learned the important theory subjects, you will be able to focus most of your time on the flight training and oral examination. Our experience showed us, that most students are ahead with their flying abilities compared to their theoretical knowledge. This results in an extension of your total training time and the total training costs. Buy the books you need in advance and already start learning at home. For information about books and other material you need, please feel free and get in touch with us. If you do so, you reduce your training time and save costs in accomodation and living.

Flight Training

To be allowed to go to the commercial check ride you will need a total of 150 flight hours. Up to 100 hrs can be flown on a fixed wing aircraft, but we recommend to fly as many hours as possible on a helicopter. During your first flight hours you will fly in the area of San Luis Obispo and later you might go for flights up to San Francisco, Los Angeles or even places like Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Between your PPL(H) and CPL(H) we use the time to give you some insights to professional helicopter operations. You will learn the important things for Photoflights, Videoflights and what you have to take care of for pipeline inspections or wire control. If you are interested, we can include the certified flight instructor license in your CPL prozess. There will only be a few additional costs, like the checkride and learning material.

Total Training Time

Our training with you will be very individual. We can adopt your timetable with your personal interests. Nevertheless, we recommend you to do two flight intervals a day, one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. A full schedule will reduce your total training costs. For your orientation, to receive the private pilot license the average training time will be six to eight weeks. For the commercial pilot license you will have to calculate about four to five month. At the end the biggest influence in your total training time will be your personal motivation.