sqwk7000-blog

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Shedding some light on how to get private pilot license (PPL) in the Netherlands: steps involved, approximate duration, prices, links and some useful tips.

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European Light Aircraft Pilot License (LAPL)

If you are residing in the European Union and interested in obtaining a pilot license for your personal use, you will find out that besides internationally recognized private pilot license (PPL) you also have an option to obtain light aircraft pilot license (LAPL).

LAPL – light aircraft pilot license in the EU. In fact, it’s the European analogue of PPL (private pilot license). This the license was introduced in EU to make general aviation more affordable and accessible for individuals. It is:

expected to be generally 20-25% cheaper than PPL if compared within one and the same training organization;

less demanding in terms of requirements needed to be met in order to obtain this license.

For instance, you need to fly not less than 30 hours to meet syllabus requirements for LAPL. Whilst for PPL you will be dealing with the minimum of 45 hours (in Europe).

Health requirements for LAPL are also less strict. Medical certificates will cost you less (~140 EUR vs ~230 EUR for Class 2, which is necessary to obtain PPL) and will be valid longer when you will be older. Prices are given for the Netherlands.

Interesting fact is that if you want to pilot a drone for commercial purposes, you also need a medical certificate (at least Class LAPL) in addition to specialized drone operator license.

Restrictions

Didn’t you thing it will be that easy, did you? :)

This license has its limitations, like:

license is not recognized anywhere in the world besides the EU;

maximum allowed passengers to carry is limited to as little as 3;

MTOW (maximum take-off weight) of the airplane under your control is limited to 2000kg;

inability to add ratings and endorsements like night rating or instrumental rating.

Furthermore, many students progressing with obtaining LAPL tend to convert their syllabus to PPL sooner or later. The reason is that most of them fail to obtain reasonable level of flying skills within the limit of as little as 30 flying hours. Further additional training gives them more and more flying hours which then grow up to or even greater than PPL-level. The also compromises the whole idea of LAPL being cheaper.

So if you fly as much as PPL demands you, why not just get it instead?

Of course, conversion while in progress will produce more overhead than if you would have been targeted to PPL from the very beginning. You will have to fly more dual and solo hours. If you completed your cross-country solo for LAPL, you may find out that you actually need to fly it again: for LAPL cross-country should be performed with 80 nautical miles of distance and one landing, whilst for PPL it’s 150 nautical miles and two landings minimum.

RPL

Before 2018 there was an RPL (recreational pilot license) in the Netherlands. In fact, it’s a PPL limited to as narrow as one country. This license was applicable before aviation authorities of European countries were consolidated under EASA and before LAPL came in. Now RPL is no longer on the table: training organizations don’t train you for it, but do provide conversion of RPL to LAPL.

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RF-32768 | Be-200ChS | Ministry of Emergency Situation (Russia) | MAKS-2015 by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: MAKS-2015

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PH-BHG | Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner | KLM Royal Dutch Airlines by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: @ San Francisco Intl (SFO)

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N2644U | Boeing 777-322(ER) | United Airlines by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: @ San Francisco Intl (SFO)

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Flying vs Driving. What’s harder to learn?

Since I started my driving lessons together with my flying lessons, I was quite often asked: “What’s more difficult: flying or driving?”

Because I am new to both of the spheres I am pretty limited to giving my current purely subjective feeling on how these two activities can be compared in terms of learning curve. Anyway, let’s try :)

Flying

Flying is definitely way more demanding in terms of controlling skills and theoretical knowledge. Managing a light prop airplane in three-dimensional space and controlling its speed, bank, altitude and heading, trimming it while it always tends to get into yet another updraft or do a random wing dip due to sudden wind gust – all of this may be quite an endeavor even after 10+ lessons or so. Not saying that these things are actually meant to be quite elementary. So much depends on how skillful you are and how you’re capable of feeling the behavior of the airplane!

This was and remains much more challenging for me in comparison with making myself acquainted with skill aspects of driving the car on the same level of expertise.

And all of these relates to cruise flight only. But what about flying circuit? Approach? Landing? In bad weather, maybe?..

Moreover, you need to be much better prepared before sitting behind the stick rather than sitting behind the wheel. Besides precise skill-set, you should take into account a myriad of things like: mass and balancing, meteo conditions, navigation, reference data, documentation and paperwork, communication with ATC, pre-flight inspections, etc. What’s more important is that you should be able to correctly interpret all this data altogether and perform relevant decision making! In Europe you’re required to pass 9 theoretical exams for just private pilot license vs only one for driving. Numbers say for themselves.

Driving

But there is something that nothing can beat driving in. It’s general unpredictability of everything that happens on the road in a big city. Even despite all the chaos that can be observed in uncontrolled airports, I still think driving through the streets of Amsterdam is much more stressful and reaction-demanding than this.

Whilst obtaining basic skills of driving didn’t seem to me as difficult as it was with flying skills, I think that ability to quickly and safely react on endless variety of completely random situations happening on city roads is the main and most demanding challenge of driving.

Over-speeding traffic appearing few meters away from you in matter of second, breaking all possible rules and forcing you to react instantaneously and break like hell? I can hardly imagine this during my flying lesson, although I witness this almost every driving lesson.

What’s harder?

Flying is harder strategically.  Preliminary preparation is of a crucial importance. You can’t just sit and fly. Theoretical, practical and situational preparation should be on a very high level before you go.

Driving is harder tactically. Ability to quickly and adequately react on constant flow of unexpected momentarily situations is a key.

Of course, I can’t argue that being vigilant is also important for aviation. As well as it is important to be well-prepared before driving.

But in this comparison I was trying to explain my subjective view on the situation based on my experience of using this or that skill more often while flying an airplane or driving a car, which my not reflect the real situation or not much opinions of other people.

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PH-BHE | KLM Royal Dutch Airlines | Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: @ Amsterdam, Schiphol (AMS / EHAM)

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F-WWOW | Airbus | Airbus A380-841 - by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: @ Paris Le Bourget Airport (LBG/LFPB)

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Wideroe Bombardier Dash 8 Q300, OSL by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: LN-WFU

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The Russian Knights Aerobatic Team | MAKS-2015 by Boris Samoylenko Via Flickr: MAKS-2015

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About Personnel Licensing

What can be found somewhat overwhelming for a freshman introducing him-/herself into aviation is the level of regulation. And personnel licensing is not an exception.

You cannot just get your licence once and fly for the rest of your life like you would normally do with your driving license.

Every new situation or type of aircraft might require you to perform additional theoretical and/or practical training, pass skill test and obtain new rating (addition to you license giving you extra rights), which is in most of the cases has its life-time requiring you to re-validate it in another year or two.

Have you ever watched Disney cartoon series “TaleSpin” (1990)?

Let’s imagine that the main character of TaleSpin - Baloo the bear - is living in the real world and being a law-obedient pilot. Then, you probably can expect him possessing at least the following:

Commercial airplane pilot license — CPL(A). To get paid for his flying. You can’t earn by having just private pilot license — it’s illegal and my lead to license withdrawal. Nevertheless, CPL requires you to first get PPL, build some flying hours, and then proceed with training for CPL. (A) stands for “airplane”. Which means it’s limited to only airplane type of aircraft only. No helicopters or balloons. Although the license never expires, it doesn’t automatically give you the right to fly. For this you need valid ratings within this license which need to be current. Baloo also could posses even more advanced airline transport pilot license (ATPL), but I’m not sure if his activities fall under airline transportation criteria.

Single-engine piston rating — SEP. For controlling aircraft with single engine. It’s very basics you start with.

Multi-engine piston rating — MEP. Controlling aircraft with multiple engines is a different story. You need special training for this.

Additional seaplane endorsement on single-/multi-engine rating. For landing on water. This is not a separate rating exactly, but it’s a variant of single- or multi-engine rating. Baloo needs both land and sea variants.

Night qualification — NQ. Required for flying visually in night conditions. In many countries, however, you need instrumental rating for this.

Instrumental rating — IR. Absolute must if you want to fly in bad weather when the visibility is low, or at night if NQ is a no-go, by using your instruments only. In this case, IFR (instrumental flight rules) are applicable. However, first you need to obtain NQ to proceed with IR. But, good news is that this rating will be already included into programme for preparting to CPL(A).

Type rating. Baloo’s plane seem to have been weighted more than 5.7 ton. For such you need a special training for this specific type of aircraft.

Mountain rating. I remember him flying in mountains. You need a training for this as well.

Glider towing rating. Not sure if this is appropriate as he was towing not a glider but another character of the cartoon. But let’s keep it here.

Medical Certificate Class 1. You should have good health to fly. Especially commercially.

English language proficiency at least at ICAO 4 level. To be permitted to communicate via radio in general. Obtaining maximum level of 6 will exempt you from re-validating your proficiency forever.

VFR and IFR Radiotelephony Certification To know the right phraseology and its usage in visual and instrumental flight rules.These are two different sets of phraseology and you need to be certified in both if you want to use radio while flying visually and by instruments. These certifications are not valid without English proficiency.

Endless flying hours…

In this list I was referring to the current European regulations of EASA, but I can imagine that picture will be alike for FAA. Anyway, all of this is a lot and requires permanent practice (and money) to maintain.

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Preamble

My name is Boris. And I am an alcoholic.

* Everyone applauses.

I am 27 y.r. old Russian residing in the Netherlands. My primary occupation is software engineering. But aviation, however, is and always was a great hobby, sort of a passion, of mine. Due to several reasons, I didn’t manage to connect my life professionally with it so far unfortunately. Nevertheless, I am working hard this year to finally get myself closer to the world of real aviation and obtain private pilot license (PPL).

My situation turned out to be not that standard after-all. I found out immediately that there is very few info available in open sources to cover solutions to the problems I have faced. Hence, the blog.

Here I am going I to shed some light on the process, share some interesting facts and pieces of information and also answer following questions:

How to become a pilot while working full-time in parallel?

How to obtain pilot license in a European country (the Netherlands in particular) without knowing national language (Dutch)?

How to become a pilot having amblyopia (lazy eye)?

How much does it cost to obtain a private pilot license (PPL) in the Netherlands?

What are the further prospective?

Whom to blame for all of these?

As I am also doing some basic aviation photography (plane-spotting), I will also publish some of the photos here. 

For the time being, I will do my best to publish more and more info here, and I really hope it will be useful for not only those who are searching the questions above, but also everyone who has any interest in aviation.