Commercial Pilots Licence

A Commercial Pilot Licence is issued by the Civil Aviation Authority in accordance with aviation rule “Part 61”.

There is a minimum flight time requirement of 200 hours to a specified syllabus followed by a flight test with an examiner. It is also necessary to pass 6 written exams and a Class 1 medical with a Civil Aviation Authority approved doctor. The detailed syllabus is specified in AC61-5 available on the CAA website.

Full time courses including a degree in aviation available for people with career loans or very deep pockets are available at Massey School of Aviation, and other similar institutions.

The BOI Aero Club course is best suited to self-funding students who need to pace their training to fit in with other commitments.

If you are intending obtaining a CPL then come and discuss your plans with the CFI as soon as you complete your PPL. The post PPL experience needs to be carefully planned if a CPL is to be obtained in close to the 200hours.

How to proceed?

First we would have a meeting to see what you had done so far and draw up a “learning plan”. This is free of charge and does not commit you to anything. In general it is recommended that you study for the ground subjects and take the exams whilst hour building to about 160 hours total. This is because the exams are the “cheap” bit but do take a lot of time and effort. The Club offers tutorials, but not formal lectures for CPL subjects.

There are “blocks” of training that need to be completed in addition to the PPL training already received. 5 hours basic mountain flying; 5 hours instrument flying; 20 hours cross country, some advanced handling exercises. The flying accuracy limits are tighter than for the PPL and the level of knowledge application is higher too. Ground instruction time for this course can be significant. Some items are only valid for a year so you should plan to undertake this training with a fixed schedule planned.