Develop your flying skills

Following a Private Pilot Licence

After successfully gaining your Private Pilot Licence (PPL), you can build your flight hours and develop your flying skills in your own time. You can work towards:

• Commercial Single Engine: 14 days
• Commercial Multi Engine Course: 14 days
• Multi Engine – MEP: 3 days
• JAA Frozen ATPL USA-UK: 60 days
• JAR FI(F) Flight Instructor: 4 weeks
• IMC – 7-10 days
• Night Rating – 5 hrs

These courses are run by Orlando Flight Training in Florida.

JAA pilot certifications beyond PPL:

Commercial Pilot License - CPL

The CPL (Commercial Pliot License) is the only way you can make flying a living. Best compared to a commercial driving license, the CPL gives you privileges of flying for compensation or hire. This covers everything from flight instruction and crop dusting to piloting large airliners.

Before you start training for the CPL you need to hold at least a Private Pilot License (PPL) and an instrument rating (IR) is advised. Many flight schools do your instrument rating (IR) and multi-engine class (ME) combined with the commercial training.

Certified Flight Instructor – CFI or FI

An instructor license allows you to build hours after becoming a commercial pilot. As a flight instructor you gain experience by teaching others to fly, allowing you to learn material by teaching and you also get paid to fly.

The instructor licenses come with ratings limiting you to certain areas of instruction. A regular instructor for instance can only instruct private pilot and commercial pilot students on single engine aircrafts. To do instrument instruction an instrument instructor rating (CFII or FII) is needed. Further to train students in multi engine aircrafts you need a multi engine instructor certificate (MEI or FI ME).

Airline Transport Pilot License - ATPL

This is the highest license you can get as a pilot and is required to act as the pilot in command (PIC) [captain] of a multi crew aircraft. Both in Europe and United States you have to be at least 23 years of age and have at least 1,500 hours of total flight time before obtaining an ATPL.

For JAA certification, most students do all the theory first of all and get a “frozen” ATPL. The final exam consists of 14 topics and takes 6 months to a year to go through. As everything is taken as one exam, it is common for people to fail one or two topics and then have to redo these topics.

A “frozen” ATPL indicates that you have done the theory but you don’t have the required flight experience to get a full ATPL – and that you need to build your flying hours.