After a very long hiatus from all things aviation related due to joining campus and studying something else completley unrelated, I was really itching to get back to delving into something I really loved.
A very long while after graduating a door opened up and I was able to get a short term contract that really paid me well enough to finally start off an adventure I had put on hold for the longest time due to various constraints.
I decided I could not wait any longer as the urge was becoming overbearing.
After much talk on which would be the best school to go after consulting friends, I quickly enrolled in one of the local schools and my heart was at rest.
In the course of my studies I came to realize that there are quite a number of pet-peeves, some trivial and some really flustering that could cause a very eager aviator to lose sight of the goal all together.
Here are some of the struggles I came up with, in no order of importance. Feel free to suggest some of your own too.
1.Paperwork
This is not really a major peeve but the entire process is quite tiresome. As with joining any institution for the first time, one will have to run around with documents from one office to the next so as to be registered as a student. For student pilots, this is no different. In fact the number of hoops you''ll have to jump before getting to that left seat of the training aircraft can leave you second guessing whether you really want to continue..
( I specify left seat here because this is the seat of the Captain and you train bearing in mind that one day you will be the captain of the aircraft)
It all starts with getting your medicals done with aviation doctors who are recommended by the aviation authority. It could set you back around 12000KES and the entire process takes a couple of days to be completed.
After getting your medical certificate you can now enroll in the school of choice. Here again you'll have to apply for your students pilot licence for when you will begin training and involves more running around and waiting for upto a week for you to be issued with the license.
Thereafter, you have to apply for your airside pass, without which you could pay some hefty fine if found on the airside without it. Now, for you to get this pass, you have to fill in some forms and take them to the Kenya Airports Authority for vetting. During this process one also has to go for a security briefing at Jomo Kenyatta Intl. Airport in order for your airside pass application to be successful. If you are lucky, the process takes a couple of weeks otherwise you could wait upto a month to get that pass.
That running around and waiting can be a huge motivation killer by the way..
2.Too many students
This can be both a good and bad thing depending on how one looks at it. When a school has many students, it could point to the fact that the quality of training is top notch, with good student to teacher relations, good facilities and well kept aircraft among other things. With many students, a new comer can build good networks especially with those more advanced aviators because pilots are having to renew their licenses and ratings every now and then, and so this becomes a good place to connect.
The drawback now comes during practicals, because now there is a long line of pilots waiting their turn to fly. I have actually witnessed instances where a student was asked to come as early as 8am only for the guy to be kept waiting till around 3pm because of a previous backlog of students who had to fly that day.
This problem is brought about due to there not being enough aircraft or instructors to cater to the number of enrolled students.
Some schools do have smaller campuses stationed at the coast or Nyeri for instance, to ease this burden, although it could come as an unforeseen cost to the student who might have to dig deeper into their pockets to cater for accomodation, transport and other misceallenous expenses should they be asked to train at these other campuses.
3. Weather
There is nothing as bad as being told that you cannot fly because prevailing conditions are not suitable for flight, and this might be after you have prepared yourself mentally and even making it to the airport in good time to do pre-flight briefings and checks.
Between the months of April all the way to July, the weather is really unpredictable and very few flights are cleared. This again means that quite a handful of students do not get an opportunity to fly leading to a backlog and one not progressing as fast in their training as they expected.
4. Language barriers
This may or may not be such a huge deal to some, but I really think it applies mostly to foreign students since they tend to miss out on juicy stories or jokes especially since everyone else is chiming in or bursting out in laughter leaving them confused as everything passes them by.
5.Aircraft parked far away from the school.
Because of how the airport is set up, some schools do not have the privilege of having their aircraft parked right outside their doorstep and instead, these aircraft are parked at some other corner of the airport, meaning that the students and instructors have to trek for quite some distance to get to the aircraft. For students, I don't really think it might be a big deal because they do not necessarily fly everyday, but for instructors, they constantly have to rush back to the office to sort out paperwork for each flight.
Some schools like FTC have their planes parked right outside the school, making accessibility far much easier and convenient.
6. Money
I decided to finish with the most common, if not obvious pet peeve of any pilot, whether just a student or one already working in the industry- MONEY
I remember once meeting a pilot at Wilson for some advice on how to go about flying in Kenya, and in the course of our discussion, he casually asked me, "So what makes a plane fly?", and there I was trying to remember my Form 3 Physics and trying to frame my response in the most articulate way to impress him, and after I gave him the scientific explanation with a self satisfied smirk, he looked at me, barely amused and told me point blank
"Wrong!! It's money!!"
I was initially taken aback by his response but after he explained everything to me, it all made sense. The reality is just that, "Money makes planes fly", and some are fortunate enough to have those resources, but for the majority, it remains a very very huge struggle to an extent that others drop out all together after spending so much, while for others, just looking at the fee structure alone is enough for them to forego their piloting dreams to go pursue other things albeit half-heartedly.
A couple of other more advanced pilots told me how their money finished completely before they could finish training, but were able to rebound through help from family and friends and they are now respectable pilots in whatever companies they are now working for.
Therefore one should not lose hope.
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