Becoming a pilot looks glamorous from the outside. In reality, it is equal parts joy, admin, money, and mental resilience. Here is some great advice from working pilots, instructors, and long-time GA flyers. Underneath the individual tips is a simple theme: treat this like a long, serious project, and you will get to keep the fun for a lifetime.
Here’s how that breaks down.
1. Before anything else, sort your medical
For many aspiring pilots, the biggest hidden risk is not money or time. It is the medical.
If you plan to fly under regulations that need a medical, do that paperwork before you start pouring cash into lessons. A few hours in the pattern only to discover a disqualifying condition is heartbreaking and expensive.
Key points:
- Book your medical early. Make “get my medical” your first milestone, not “book my discovery flight number three.”
- If you have any history, assume it matters. ADHD, anxiety, antidepressants, sleep meds, substance history – all of these can complicate your file. That does not mean you are disqualified, but it does mean more paperwork and more time.
- Talk to an AME if needed. For anything in the gray zone, an Aviation Medical Examiner can tell you what documentation, waiting periods, or evaluations you will need.
- Aim one step higher than today. If an aviation career is even a maybe, aim for a first-class medical early. If your goal is purely recreational, a third-class or basic med might be enough.
Sorting the medical first reduces uncertainty. It turns “I hope I can do this” into “I know what path I’m on.”
2. Treat the cockpit as a practice room, not a classroom
Time in the airplane is the most expensive way to learn the basics. The aircraft shakes, ATC talks, your brain is saturated, the clock is burning. It is a terrible environment for first exposure.
The advice is blunt: front‑load your learning on the ground.
- Use structured materials. Online courses, FAA handbooks like the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (PHAK) and Airplane Flying Handbook (AFH), and the FAR/AIM give you the theory and rules in digestible form.
- Chair fly. Sit in a chair, close your eyes, and talk through the flow: start-up, taxi, run-up, takeoff, climb, pattern, landing. Touch an imaginary throttle, yoke, switches. Visual rehearsal builds muscle memory.
- Study a little, often. One focused hour a day beats a frantic five-hour cram before a lesson. You want the textbook work to feel almost boring by the time you see it in the airplane.
The result: when you get in the cockpit, you are not meeting concepts for the first time. You are practicing them.
3. Get real about money, time, and expectations
Learning to fly is one of the most rewarding things you can spend money on. It is also one of the least forgiving if you are not honest about your resources.
- Budget for more than the brochure. School estimates are often best-case scenarios. Add margin for weather delays, repeat lessons, and life interruptions.
- Avoid predatory finance. High-interest “pilot loans” tied to course packages can trap you if the school is poorly run or you need more hours than expected. Whenever possible, pay as you go or use more conventional financing with clear terms.
- Protect your mental bandwidth. Flight training asks for problem-solving, pattern recognition, and emotional control. Trying to “squeeze it in” around an already maxed-out life can turn it into a grind.
- Stop comparing timelines. The person who solos at 10 hours is not “better” than the person who solos at 25. Everyone arrives with different backgrounds, learning styles, and stressors. Your only real benchmark is: am I safer and more competent than last month?
If you treat training like a marathon with planned fueling stops, you are less likely to flame out halfway.
4. Build good flying habits from day one
Habits you form in the first 20 hours are the ones that will show up under stress in hour 2,000. That is why instructors in the thread hammer the same basics.
- Trim constantly. Don’t fight the airplane. Use trim so that, once set, the aircraft wants to stay at the attitude and airspeed you chose.
- Manage your power in the pattern. Think in terms of “energy” rather than just speed and altitude. Are you fast and low, slow and high, stable on final? Small corrections early beat big corrections late.
- Stay coordinated. Step on the ball. Slipping and skidding not only feel sloppy, they can be dangerous close to the ground.
- Practice the ugly stuff. Stalls, go-arounds, and landings in crosswinds or less-than-perfect conditions build real confidence. You do not want your first go‑around decision to happen on a tight, hot day with a short runway and traffic breathing down your neck.
Above all: you can always go around. A long landing, a balloon, or a bad flare is not a personal failure. It is a cue to add power, clean up the configuration, and try again.
5. Expect rough days, and protect the fun
The community is clear: everyone has humiliating landings, busted approaches, and “I’m never going to get this” days.
What matters is how you frame them.
- Bad days are part of the curriculum. Cognitive overload is normal. Fatigue shows up. You will plateau. Expect it rather than reading it as a verdict on whether you “belong” in aviation.
- Schedule joy flights. Not every lesson needs to be a checkride rehearsal. Occasionally, go fly a scenic route, practice gentle maneuvers, or just watch the world slide by under the wing. It reminds you why you started — and it takes the stress out.
- Talk kindly to yourself. The way you debrief internally after a rough flight shapes your resilience. “I blew that flare, but I recognized it and went around” is a very different story from “I suck at landings.”
If you protect the fun, you are more likely to keep going through the grind.
6. Carry yourself like a professional, whatever your license
Whether your goal is a weekend $100 hamburger or an airline cockpit, professionalism is not about the color of your epaulettes. It is about attitude.
- Respect the environment. The sky does not care how confident you feel. Weather, terrain, airspace, and physics are indifferent. Use checklists, briefings, and conservative decision-making.
- Set personal minimums. Legal limits are the floor, not your target. Define your own visibility, ceiling, wind, and crosswind limits and stick to them, especially as a newer pilot.
- Resist pressure. Passengers, schedules, money, ego – all of these push pilots toward “just this once” decisions. The community’s advice is to rehearse polite but firm ways to say no before you are in the moment.
- Clean up your digital footprint. Regulators and employers increasingly look at the whole person. Public posts flaunting drug use or reckless behavior can come back to bite you. The FAA’s stance on federally illegal substances is not ambiguous.
Professionalism is not about being joyless. It is about taking responsibility for every flight from planning to shutdown.
7. Lean into the community
Aviation can feel intimidating, but most pilots remember what it was like to be new. You are not supposed to do this alone.
- Ask questions, especially the obvious ones. Many “dumb” questions are actually safety questions in disguise. If something does not make sense, speak up.
- Change instructors if you are stuck. A plateau may be about teaching style, not your ability. A different CFI can unlock a maneuver you have been wrestling with for weeks.
- Value the people as much as the airplanes. Hangar talk, club BBQs, online communities – this is where you pick up unwritten norms, war stories, and “don’t do what I did” lessons that never make it into the PHAK.
The airplanes are what brought everyone together. The relationships are what keep people in the game. Join our Discord server for great conversations.
The long view: fly for a lifetime, not just a license
A license is not the finish line. It is a license to keep learning.
If you secure your medical early, study seriously on the ground, budget honestly, build solid habits, protect the fun, act like a professional, and stay plugged into the community, you stack the odds in your favor.