| Do You Really Want to Fly? |
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For other pilots, it's the efficiency of cutting travel time and having more fun getting there. Even though a sport plane has limited performance, it can fly twice as fast as you can drive. Add to this that you can fly a straight line, so flying time could be less than half of an automobile trip. Still other pilots fly because they want to share their perspective with family and friends. They love taking kids and grandkids and neighborhood kids up in the plane. Some sport pilots are simply looking for incremental training toward a career in aviation. Instead of paying up to $8,000 for a private-pilot certificate, they opt for the new sport-pilot certificate at less than half the cost. If they're hooked on flying they will then earn endorsements and take tests to move on up in certification. Their sport-pilot logbook can be applied to requirements for any higher pilot certificate. Many wannabe pilots, however, aren't really sure why they want to fly. They just do. And they're not sure how they will use their flying in the future. They might start out by going to fly-ins and pancake breakfasts, then move to camping under the wing, and finally decide on turning their love of flying into a business or a career. For them, it makes much more sense to start with an inexpensive certificate and work toward higher ratings as interest and resources grow. That's the real function of the new sport-pilot certificate: to give people a safe and relatively inexpensive way to enjoy flying.
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For many pilots, it's the thrill of adding a third dimension to their visual prospective. It is being able to see their homes, workplaces, and even problems from a different prospective. Crabgrass doesn't look as important from 1,500 feet above.