Becoming a helicopter pilot is very challenging but also can be a great deal of fun and is beyond rewarding.
The cost for training can be cost prohibitive for many but there is some relief if you are willing to look.
Anyone that is truly serious about getting a helicopter pilot's license should be prepared for some challenges, but anything worth having is challenging.
The cost for becoming a pilot these days isn't getting any cheaper; in fact it could cost as much as seventy thousand dollars to get a commercial pilot's license.
Don't get discouraged however, because there are some programs, grants, loans and ways around having to pay such exorbitant prices.
First of all keep in mind that the process is usually broken up into sections.
Step one is to get your private pilots license.
This requires seventy hours of ground school training and forty hours of flight time.
These times I'll be giving are of course the minimums, in some cases in may take more flight hours depending on one's aptitude.
The next step is to obtain a commercial pilot's license.
This will require one hundred and twenty five more ground school hours and an additional one hundred and ten flight hours.
You will also have to pass written, oral, and flight testing at each step in the process.
As you can see the cost at this point is substantial as the commercial testing alone might be as much as forty thousand dollars or more.
The next step will depend on what your goals are.
If you intend to make flying helicopters a career, and you are not already employed, then you probably will go on to become a certified instructor level one and two.
This will require an additional thirty hours of ground school and an additional thirty hours of flight time.
What this will do is prepare you for the first money saving tactic.
The reason becoming a flight instructor can be so beneficial is that, instead of paying hundreds of dollars per hour to build valuable flight time you are actually getting paid to build hours as an instructor.
To be honest, the good employers won't hire you unless you have quite a few hours built up.
It could take as many as three thousand hours to get hired on and that would be ridiculously expensive to undertake on your own dime.
This is the part where we talk about ways to save money or at least spread out the payments to chewable chunks.
Not too many people could come up with seventy thousand dollars at once and there isn't a ton of easy to get school loans out there.
The good news is there are now a few school loans available where in the past they were non-existent or few and far between.
If you are lucky enough to get hired by certain firms they might pay for your schooling but if you are completely on your own then flight trainer is the path for you.
So the long and the short of becoming a pilot is that even though it can be expensive it is not impossible to do.
With a little patience and willingness anyone can become a helicopter pilot.