My first pilot training flight
Getting off the ground, feeling no fear, and…ginger
So today I had my first official flying lesson!
This morning I was concerned it wouldn’t go ahead as the flying school called me to tell me about some kind of weather front (I’m assuming it won’t be long before I know more of the terminology…!) which was due in the evening. Luckily I got a call to let me know the adverse conditions were to hold off for my 4pm flight time, so I headed to the Elstree Aerodrome where Flight Training London is based.
I was expecting to arrive to a pretty formal setting, but much to my delight, the atmosphere was super chilled. With a cup of tea in hand after chatting away to Tamsin who runs the business, my instructor Ivan (who runs the school alongside Tamsin) took me for a 30 minute pre-flight briefing.
Ivan took me over the basic flight controls — pitch, roll and yaw — and with the aid of a model plane, explained climbing, descending, turning and taxiing. I’d be doing all of these for real in the first lesson, which felt slightly daunting being told all this while sitting in an office, but equally reassuring that we’d be diving straight in.
We’d be flying a Cessna 152 for my lesson, and before we got into the plane, we had to do several checks such as making sure we had enough fuel and oil, and doing a walk-around of the plane itself to check for anything untoward. Ivan then took me through the controls inside the cockpit, radioed the aerodrome to get clear for takeoff, and turned on the engine (after, of course, opening the window to yell ‘CLEAR PROP’ in case anyone was in our blind spot by the propeller…)
As much as there were many instructions and several things to check, it struck me as actually very ‘simple’ — what I mean by that, is when you get on a commercial plane, there is so much admin, safety precautions and security that it kind of makes you feel like it’s a super big deal to get on a plane. It’s not that learning to fly in a small plane isn’t safe or secure, but I guess I was surprised that literally yelling out a window is an official safety procedure! You also don’t have to turn your phone onto flight safe mode…
I think that feeling of it being really down-to-earth also stopped me from feeling any real fear at any point. It may also have been down to the fact that Ivan felt like such a safe pair of hands and that I was buzzing with adrenaline, but I did surprise myself at the complete lack of fear throughout the whole experience.
What I did feel, though, was motion sickness. Oh god, the motion sickness! As much as we were heading out before the weather was to get adverse, we still had wind and rain to contend with for the hour in the air. I’ve had car sickness for as long as I can remember, so I was expecting to feel a little nauseous, but I wasn’t prepared for it being so strong throughout the flight! We had to open the windows so I could get some serious air at 2,200ft — another ‘simple’ thing, flying with the windows open! — but fortunately I didn’t have to accept Ivan’s kind offer of a sick bag..! Seemingly pilots can get used to the motion and the sickness subsides as you rack up more hours — and according to Ivan, eating ginger before you fly is meant to help. Definitely investing in some Ginger Snaps for the tube journey next week!
Obviously I didn’t take off or land, but I did taxi the plane to and from the runway using the pedals (controlling the rudder — yawing), and controlled the plane while we were in the air! I got to feel what it was like to turn the plane (roll movement), to go full throttle, to climb and descend (pitch movement), and to fly straight (no mean feat when the wind and the turbulence has other ideas…!) I was taken by how little motion is required to move the plane — it’s less of a ‘turn’ and more about applying pressure, and was chuffed at how quickly I could get the hang of keeping the horizon in place once I’d got a feel for this right kind of pressure. I wasn’t great at the ‘visual flying’ element — looking to check for other planes before changing direction! — so that’s something I’ll need to work on..!
As we headed towards the runway, due to the cross wind, Ivan had to use the foot pedal to control the rudder so as to ‘crab’ land — this meant we were flying straight through the turbulence as we approached the aerodrome, but the nose was at an angle to the runway (called ‘crab’ as you are moving sideways!) It was cracking to watch this manoeuvre and I was excited about learning this as my training continues. I didn’t feel too phased by it — I’m so glad I’m not feeling scared about learning to take off and land — but I’m psyched to feel like I’m going to have to master lots of ‘skills’, something that I’ve not really had to do in my day-to-day life in recent years.
After we landed, I taxied us back, with Ivan steering us into the correct spot. After going through the procedures of turning everything off and performing final checks, we got out and reversed the plane (literally by pulling it…) for parking. Ivan told me that my hand-eye coordination had been really good — particularly considering the conditions — so I was well made up!
We went back into the flight school, filled in my brand new Pilot Log (with cup of tea in hand) and booked in my next flight for next week. We chatted about how often I wanted to fly (I’m thinking every week or fortnight depending on my schedule, as I don’t want skills to wear off while I’m learning), and a little about how the exams work (more on this in my next post). Ivan also assigned me some exercises to complete over the next 7 days — never have I been so excited about homework..!
And that was it — my first real flying lesson! I’m sitting here 5 hours later still with a bit of motion sickness lingering, but with a head full of excitement and gratitude to have begun this new hobby of mine for real. Now the hard work begins…
…and here’s to my newfound love of ginger.
