The time is NOW

Today’s vintage aircraft owners pine for the excitement, craftsmanship, and rapid advancements of the “golden age” during the 1920s and 1930s when so many pioneering designs were born. Warbird pilots seek visceral connections to the triumph and sacrifice their historical airplanes evoke.

General aviation pilots who started flying a couple generations ago look longingly at the Stearmans, Wacos, and Piper Cubs that shaped so many of their predecessors and wish such airplanes were still cheap and plentiful. GA pilots who started 20 years ago think back to earlier eras when avgas was more affordable and professional opportunities more abundant.

But when you tune out the nostalgia and look objectively, there’s never been a better time to learn to fly than today. There’s no shortage of challenges—some of the most formidable being economic. It’s demonstrably true that today’s student pilots have better safety equipment, better learning tools, and, often, more reliable, superior handling aircraft to fly than previous generations. Today’s safety record is better than it’s ever been, and job opportunities for new pilots are plentiful.

The fatal accident rate during flight training dropped nearly 50 percent during 2015–2019 compared to the 2000–2004 period, according to the AOPA Air Safety Institute. Fatal midair collisions were reduced to six accidents in the 2010–2019 period compared to 21 in 2000–2009.

The most obvious and important advancements have been ADS-B and GPS—and their benefits are almost impossible to overstate. Getting lost on a cross-country flight used to be a rite of passage for pilots, and it happened regularly. Students didn’t have access to graphical weather information once they left the ground. They spent a great deal of time and effort searching traffic without the aid of active traffic systems. And they had to rely on paper charts with published minimum safe altitudes to keep them clear of obstacles and terrain instead of colorful moving maps.

Pilots are still capable of blundering into bad weather, having midair collisions, hitting mountains or tall towers, and getting lost and running out of fuel—but those things, mercifully, don’t happen nearly as often as they used to. Those of us who remember the demands of the old days have no desire to go back. The lack of a GPS signal, a traffic warning system, or a moving map GPS feels like an emergency when, in fact, for generations, it was just normal.

Today’s online tools, flight simulators, and virtual reality programs are far superior to the way teaching and learning was done in the past. Reading the FAA’s Airplane Flying Handbook was, and still is, a decent start. But now, that dry material is supplemented by online courses that are available all the time and can be tailored to the student’s own pace. Immersive video and graphical presentations are increasingly utilizing virtual reality and break down each step in the process from flight planning to execution of individual maneuvers.

New pilots today still have access to all the traditional methods. They can still attend in-person ground schools, read the same instructional books and magazine articles, and talk with more seasoned pilots. But they also can delve more deeply into online materials through scenario-based training, specific coursework, and the rapidly growing video and VR libraries.

The advent of action cameras is another underrated flight training benefit. In addition to instructional videos and YouTube Shorts these cameras enable students to record their own flights and review them afterward, allowing them to slow things down and focus on particular areas. And instead of multiple touch-and-goes becoming blurred in their minds, they can see trends in approach speeds, engine power settings, and runway placement by watching and rewatching their previous performance. The audio from these sessions enables students to listen to instructor comments and observations without the noisy and sometimes stressful cockpit where the things said during flight are easily missed or misconstrued.Regardless of the technological advances that take place, the personality traits for success in flying are timeless.

Flight simulators have been around for decades—but the advent of motion simulators like Redbird and Frasca for general aviation and wraparound graphics have made them more realistic than ever. Some of them allow students to log the instructional time. But even those that don’t, like desktop flight simulators, are excellent teaching tools that can raise student performance in airplanes and allow them to progress faster.

VR training programs are relatively new, but they are proving highly effective at preparing students and helping them absorb the things they experience in flight.

Flight planning apps like Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight provide detailed information presented in a logical format that dramatically improves preflight preparation, in-flight situational awareness, and post-flight record keeping in ways that would have seemed fanciful to previous generations. There are no mandatory calls to flight service briefers who would describe the dynamic weather that’s now available at a glance on smartphones and tablets. And new features allow pilots to review their flights afterward and evaluate their performance.

Subscription prices for these apps can seem costly—but they’re a small fraction of the price paper charts used to command, and they can do things like flight planning and filing that make them invaluable.

Glass-panel avionics are orders of magnitude more reliable than analog gauges ever were. Modern avionics allow pilots to fly with greater precision and situational awareness than mechanical gauges, and electronics don’t rely on the failure-prone vacuum pumps that pilots used to entrust their lives to for attitude information.

Student pilots who learn to fly with integrated avionics suites like the Garmin G1000 will likely have an easier time picking up complex flight management systems in larger, faster airplanes because the boxes share similar logic. They also record each flight, and that data can be reviewed and evaluated later using programs like FlySto and ForeFlight.

Autopilots used to be relegated to high-end airplanes only, not trainers. But the introduction of lightweight, digital autopilots to the training fleet allows new pilots to get used to operating them earlier. When used judiciously during training, they can be valuable workload reducers and safety enhancements. And truthfully, the new generation of autopilots fly far better than the heavy, clunky old ones ever did.

Today’s training aircraft are more resistant to inadvertent stalls and spins than ever, and that’s mostly a blessing although there’s a hint of a curse, too. The obvious benefit is improved flight safety by avoiding often fatal stall/spin accidents. The downside is that new students don’t have the chance to develop the stick-and-rudder skills and rudder acuity that came from flying tailwheel trainers like Piper Cubs, Aeronca Champs, Citabrias, and others that were commonly used for primary training decades ago. Countering adverse yaw and other undesirable flight characteristics inherent in trainers of that era required heightened pilot awareness and timely responses.

Such training shortcomings don’t have to be permanent, however. New pilots can seek out tailwheel, aerobatic, unusual-attitude, backcountry, glider, and seaplane training that can fill those gaps. Then, new pilots can combine those old-school skills with their facility with modern avionics and planning tools to build on the knowledge base passed along from preceding generations.

The job prospects for new pilots seeking aviation careers are brighter than they’ve ever been—and the opportunities aren’t limited to those seeking airline careers. They’re available for pilots in corporate, charter, agriculture, firefighting, outfitters, drop zones, flight instruction, and many other fields. That promising career outlook isn’t just good for pilots looking for work, either. It’s manna for flight schools, maintenance facilities, and aircraft manufacturers, too. That healthy forecast leads to new investments that can raise training standards and improve the flight training experience for everyone.

New pilots would be foolish to ignore the uncertainties and potential storm clouds on the horizon. Pilotless or remotely piloted drones have shown that aircraft can be flown all over the world with no one in the cockpit. Aircraft manufacturers are developing pilot-optional aircraft, and it’s possible that two-pilot crews could be reduced to single-pilot operations at air cargo and even passenger airlines in the not-too-distant future.

Regardless of the technological changes that take place in aviation, however, the characteristics and personality traits for success in flying are timeless. Curiosity, grit, technical mastery, resourcefulness, teamwork, and self-confidence will always be essential in flying.

Throw in some deft hand-eye-foot coordination as a tribute to pilots from yesteryear and today’s aviators can be the most capable and complete pilots that have ever existed. FT

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