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LY
S U RV I VA L S K I L LS

F ?
EVERYTHING YOU
NEED TO KNOW
BEFORE YOU
INVEST IN PILOT
SCHOOL
BY CORK GRAHAM

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As a teenager in 1983, I was
a U.S. Marine-option naval
midshipmen at UC Berkeley
with aspirations of flying
the then-new F-18 for the
Marine Corps. But, haunted by having lived
in Vietnam as a child—my first memories of
life start with the Tet Offensive of 1968 in
Saigon—I went to my commanding officer
and requested a leave of absence (LOA).
With my LOA and a plane ticket to Thailand,
I headed off to try my luck at combat
photography, reporting on American MIAs
left in Indochina at the end of the Vietnam
War, the Viet-Khmer War and the Hmong
Resistance. In the end, I spent 11 months
imprisoned by the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam. The story was later turned into an
international bestselling memoir that stirred
Discovery Channel to hire me to appear on
its show Treasure Quest: Snake Island.
Ironically, after my release from Vietnam
nearly a year later, I spent much of my time
in the air, either flying on airlines to locations
around the world on assignment for
various news services, or later—when I was
recruited by the CIA to help fight President

iStock Images
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“REMEMBER THAT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
IS A TEACHER, AND A GOOD TEACHER DIAGNOSES
AND PROVIDES TACTICS AND TECHNIQUES
TO CORRECT AND IMPROVE.”
To save money, the author (right)
moved from Alaska to Huntsville,
Texas, where he found the perfect
flight school and instructor.
Reagan’s war against communism—in a variety
of aircraft, including UH-1s, MD-500s, A-37s,
O-2s, C-123s, C-47s and C-130s. I’m probably
one of the last to do a static-line combat jump
out of a Southern Air Transport C-47, following
a load of weapons and medical supplies headed
for Miskito Indians fighting for their lives against
the Sandinistas. Only a few months later, another
Southern Air Transport aircraft, a C-123, gained
international fame as the plane in which Eugene
Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua.
RISKY BUSINESS
I was always a passenger, never a pilot. That
was until 2000, when, with a rekindled dream to
become a pilot, I went to Bel-Air International at
San Carlos Airport, drawn by an advertisement
for a private pilot license for only $10,000.
As one Federal Aviation Administration(FAA)
investigator would later tell me, “If it sounds too
good to be true, it probably is.”
Weeks passed, and so did the hours.
Fifty-three flight hours were logged in my student
pilot logbook, and I had yet to have my first solo
cross-country, much less my private pilot license
(PPL). Not only that, but the owner said that I had
to pay more. What in the world was going on?
It’s no surprise that Bel-Air International is
no longer in business, and that the last five-star
Yelp reviews were from customers of their air
tours, and one-star reviews were for the flight
training. More importantly, Bel-Air is logged
in the National Transportation Safety Board
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(NTSB) crash reports, with two planes down in
three days, at the same airport of all places—
Byron, California—on June 6 and 9, 2008.
According to the NTSB report on the June
6, 2008 accident, probable cause was “the
flight instructor’s inadequate compensation for
the wind conditions, and his inadequate super-
vision of the student pilot. Factors contributing
to the accident were a sudden wind shift and
wind gusts.” For the accident three days later,
the NTSB said that the accident was due to
the student pilot’s failure to maintain directional
control during landing. The report noted: “The
student reported that he ‘stepped on the right
rudder/brakes’ and ‘lost directional control.’
An estimated 30-foot-long skid mark was
observed on the runway leading off its right
side. Thereafter, the airplane entered a grassy
open field and came to rest upon colliding with
the up-sloping side of a ravine.”
Both of these accidents could have easily
ended in fatalities. So, how do you recognize a
school where they can help you get your private
pilot’s license and make sure you’ll be breathing
for many years of flying to come, too?
CRITICAL TIPS
First, make sure they’re not a PPL mill trying to
get your money, or just as bad, a place for cer-
tified flight instructors (CFIs) to use your flying
hours to add to their logbooks so that they can
get the minimum 500 to 1,000 hours to get that
first airline job. When I was at Bel-Air, I didn’t
realize until I was nearing the end of the 50-hour
package that I was basically just building my
various instructors’ hours. Let me first ask you a
question: Do you want to learn from someone
who just got their CFI certification (on average,
CFIs using an instructor’s license to build hours
have anywhere from 250 to 1,000 hours), or
would you rather be instructed by someone with
years of flight experience?
One sign that the flight school isn’t just a
PPL mill: They don’t have “packages.” If they
do have a package and are reputable, they will
qualify the package description by clearly stating
how much it will cost per hour with a fueled
plane if you have to get more hours for further
instruction, because no two students are the
same. Most importantly, when you sign up with
an instructor, you should have the opportunity to
see if that instructor fits. The only way to do this
is to take a couple of flights with the instructor
and go over exactly what you need to be able to
accomplish in terms of tasks that will show an
examiner on the checkride you are proficient to
be licensed as a private pilot.
This is where you sit down with your
instructor and a copy of the FAA’s Federal
Aviation Regulations and review Part 61. You
should have read this section before you have
the sit-down. By the time you’re done training,
you should have read the latest edition of the
Federal Aviation Regulations/Aeronautical Infor-
mation Manual (FAR/AIM) from cover to cover in
preparation for your exam. The sit-down should
take place, at the latest, by the second meeting
with your instructor. Be clear with your instructor
that, once you’ve decided to train with him or
her, they will be your instructor until you get
signed off in your logbook to take your private
pilot exam. You need to focus on the training,
not being bounced around among instructors.
Pay special attention to Part 61.109, which
covers what you must have completed with
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regard to aeronautical experience. It’s very
clear: three hours of cross-country flight, one
cross-country of over 100 miles, and so on. Go
through each one with your instructor. Have
daily, weekly and logbook hours milestones.
PERSONAL SUCCESS
When I moved back to Alaska, I quickly
realized that flying opened up areas of the
“last frontier” like no other form of transpor-
tation. I asked friends and family who were
pilots which schools or instructors they would
recommend. I already knew it was crazy for
me to try to do it in Alaska. Fuel costs alone
made it impossible.
Texas, on the other hand, with low fuel
prices and a place to stay with extended family,
made it easy for me to choose Huntsville
Aviation in Huntsville, Texas. An instructor
with a fueled plane per hour at Huntsville was
about half the cost of the same in Alaska.
“AS ONE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION…
INVESTIGATOR WOULD LATER TELL ME, ‘IF IT SOUNDS
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS.’”
That he was retired was another bonus. His
schedule became my schedule.
This leads to another step of rapidly get-
ting your private pilot’s license. If you really
want to get the best out of your training,
dedicate the time. If you live near your flight
school, try to schedule a flight once a day,
five days a week. For this reason, the smaller
schools can be better. Bigger schools are
likely to pass you around between various
instructors, because bigger schools are
Despite his experience likely hiring their recent CFI program gradu-
around a variety of aircraft
as a combat photographer ates, which means that when their CFIs hit
and CIA operative, the author that magic 500 or 1,000 hours, they’ve gone
A point to remember when you’re flying is
that it’s supposed to be fun. This entails chem-
istry between you and your instructor—how you
get along. It also means that you’re checking
your FAR for your exam requirements, and
you’re feeling that you’re progressing. If you’re
not getting signed off for your first solo and the
hours just keep building up, or you haven’t even
gotten a cross-country out of the way and you’re
over 40 hours, you need to get a solid answer
from your instructor on why this is the case.
Remember that your instructor is a teacher, and
a good teacher diagnoses and provides tactics
and techniques to correct and improve. When

Captain Wanda Collins was referred as an
instructor, but she was unavailable because
of her schedule flying for United Airlines. Her
iStock Photo
didn’t begin his journey to to a right seat on an airline. If not, they really you finally get your PPL, keep these words to
becoming a pilot until 2000.
need to convince you that they would prefer heart, as they will help keep you alive: “A pilot’s
to be an instructor. license is really a license to learn.”

husband, Leif Mauritzson, was a retired airline

pilot, and I was excited to learn from him. If you
haven’t noticed a theme here yet, it’s that neither
of these instructors could possibly be waiting
hungrily to build hours for that new airline job.
The problem was that Mauritzson, though clearly
the perfect candidate for instructor, with a
wealth of information and being retired, would
be out of town when I arrived in Texas.
As I’ve said many times, and especially in
my latest memoir about my experiences in the
reality TV industry, “wolves pack together.” Good
instructors know other good instructors. Good
instructors will get you connected and working
with those other good instructors. Mauritzson
introduced me to George Toth, an instructor who
had escaped Communist Hungary and ended up
becoming a test pilot and instructor for a major
aircraft manufacturer. Not only that, but he had
also built and flown his own experimental aircraft.

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