Hello all, I’ve just started the GA journey by starting my PPL training in the UK now that flying schools have reopened for non-commercial training. My aim to to travel around Europe both solo and with my family of 4. In more “normal” times I would travel to Europe 10+ times a year by car, train and plane, so would hope to be able to do this myself in the the future.
I have suffered from motion sickness in my first few lessons (poor instructor) but hope to overcome this with practice. But it did make me wonder whether light aircraft travel is pleasant / comfortable my my kids? What are other pilots’ experiences of relatively long distance IFR travel with teenage children?
Welcome!
Amateurish wrote:
I have suffered from motion sickness in my first few lessons (poor instructor) but hope to overcome this with practice.
I wouldn’t worry too much – many pilots experience this in the beginning and it typically gets much better when you fly yourself.
Amateurish wrote:
But it did make me wonder whether light aircraft travel is pleasant / comfortable my my kids?
Depends a bit on the age. Typically, they are either super excited, bored and sleeping or just don’t care and play around with their iPad.
Amateurish wrote:
What are other pilots’ experiences of relatively long distance IFR travel with teenage children?
One of the two loves to take the right seat and acts as “Carbon Autopilot” for the most part of the flight – and is better at keeping course and altitude by hand than myself by now – while the other “likes” it like a long drive in the car but doesn’t care too much.
Hello there!
One piece of advice: try to finish your PPL as fast as possible now that we have good UK summer weather before the winter comes with its bad weather.
During training, you can more or less go fly with marginal weather (say 1500ft bases), but you need pretty good weather for your test and this can delay you considerably.
I was ready for my CPL skills test (which is a VFR test like the PPL) last October 2020. Because of bad weather (among other things), my test was postponed countless times and I only got to do it just recently in April. A 6 month ordeal, just for one flight!
Also, the longer it takes, the more it will cost you because you won’t want to go test without having flown for more than 1 or 2 weeks which will require additional refresher flights.
Alpha_Floor wrote:
During training, you can more or less go fly with marginal weather (say 1500ft bases), but you need pretty good weather for your test and this can delay you considerably.
My weather minima for the test was actually lower compared to the qualifying cross-country (QXC) flight…
Thanks all. I will try to get two hours flying a week done, so hopefully complete the course before winter.
My school seems very “old school” in its approach to training with some raised eyebrows when I explained my aim of European flying. I get the impression that most students are more interested in local flying. The training is done in 152s, all very basic. I presume that this is all fine in terms of getting my PPL, then working towards learning how to do long distance travel in more modern machinery?
Malibuflyer wrote:
Depends a bit on the age. Typically, they are either super excited, bored and sleeping or just don’t care and play around with their iPad.
Did your kids also suffer motion sickness at first? Is it better at higher altitudes?
Amateurish wrote:
I presume that this is all fine in terms of getting my PPL, then working towards learning how to do long distance travel in more modern machinery?
Maybe… It means that you will have to learn yourself about the modern machinery and also that you will make your first long-distance trip without the moral support of an instructor. Some people never manage to cross that threshold. It depends on your personality, I guess.
Amateurish wrote:
My school seems very “old school” in its approach to training with some raised eyebrows when I explained my aim of European flying. I get the impression that most students are more interested in local flying. The training is done in 152s, all very basic. I presume that this is all fine in terms of getting my PPL, then working towards learning how to do long distance travel in more modern machinery?
This is endemic unfortunately.
It’s very likely most instructors in your school have never flown farther than what is required for the qualifying cross country. You will come across pompous and condescending flight instructors of the “son, you better stay in the circuit until you have 1000000 flight hours” type.
My advice is to just say “yes, sure sure”, keep a low profile, and get your PPL. Don’t tell them what you want to do with the PPL afterwards because there are some sadists in the system who will be unnecessarilly harder on you if you tell them you actually want to fly to places. Once you have your PPL the real fun and learning will begin for you.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Some people never manage to cross that threshold. It depends on your personality, I guess.
Exactly. They never cross the threshold because you’d never convince a PPL instructor to fly with you to France, let alone Spain, Italy, Croatia etc.
So you need to have the “balls” to do it on your own for the first time. That or find a flying buddy who has done it before, this forum is a good place to start :)
Welcome to EuroGA, Amateurish 
My two kids flew with me since the age of about 4. Neither was ever seasick, but I think it depends on the weather you pick. In the typical summer, flying at the typical altitudes used for UK PPL training (1000-2000ft) it gets very bumpy under the little bits of white fluff. Try to go above them; then you get completely calm air.
Also allowing a passenger to fly much reduces the chances of them getting seasick. And small kids can be surprisingly good at flying You just need to get a cushion of them to sit on so they can see forward. And be careful where you fly due to this – it is really easy to infringe airspace when looking after a passenger
Kids love flying, and if they get bored they go to sleep.
