Page 27 - Dear aviator...

Course mates - We stand alone together

I started this adventure under the assumption that it would have been a very
personal - potentially very lonely - journey. I had envisaged myself studying on my
own and flying with an instructor and that’s it; no contact with anyone else. Mind
you… this was fine with me; I am a loner by nature and coming from an academic
background made of long nights studying has moulded me into being comfortable
with being alone; I know I can rely on myself to get the job done and that I am
100% responsible for my success or my failure.
That assumption was in some ways correct and in others it was very, very wrong.
I consider aviation training a very personal experience as I spent a lot of time on my
own, studying, flying, sitting exams. I spent a lot of time, often at night while trying
to sleep, alone with myself thinking about my next flight, or my next test.
However, and unexpectedly, aviation training can be downright overcrowded!
When I showed up for my first evening class in early November 2017, I was only
one of another 40-odd students crammed in the classroom. It was an impossibly
large number and I was surprised at all these people who I thought I would go
through training with.
Clearly the idea of aviation is intriguing and I shouldn’t have been surprised to see
so many fall prey to the proposition of being able to become pilots.
However, the reality of training soon set in and that number dwindled over the first
few weeks and settled to about 20ish by the end of the first stage of training around
February 2018. We had a short break and when the second cluster of training
started in April the class had shrunk further to about 15 and then reduced to a
dozen by the end of the PPL phase in September. The last cluster started in
December with six students and that number remained the same till the end of the
theory course in June 2019 the following year; we actually acquired a couple of
stragglers from previous courses who needed remedial instruction.
Now if you ask me that is one hell of a drop-out rate.
I’m not here to comment on the reasons why most students left, potentially
forfeiting the amount of money they had invested and/or taken out on loan; I would
rather like to comment on those who remained. We nicknamed ourselves “The
Survivors”, those who had weathered the long nights in class, the commutes to the
airport, the exams, the flights together and flight tests alone.
A bond had been created; a connection borne out of a common experience. We still
were going through training in a solitary manner - we couldn’t sit exams in a group
and we weren’t allowed to take each other as passengers yet...but we cared for each
other, for our successes and our failures; we helped each other study, propped
each other up when one of us felt down, gave each other advice and bitched about
instructors who we thought treated us unfairly. During the final months of training
we were able to fly together and organised group flights and explored the country,
we had meals together and talked about all things aviation.
These two years have allowed me to build some incredible friendships with people I
would never have met if not for this wonderful experience. I know for a fact that we
shall all treasure each other’s friendship regardless of where we will go from here
and of what we will be doing. I shall be forever grateful to aviation for this.

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