Keeping your cool

The joys of command building

Almost every pilot would agree that going from zero hours to gaining a private pilot’s licence in an integrated course involves a steep learning curve. Ours was an 8am until 5pm course, with flights or theory in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. Despite the fact we have a Bachelor of Aviation qualification, there was still a lot of content we needed to actually understand rather than rely on memory – and that all added up to a lot of stress along the way.

But after you pass the flight test and the stress has gone, the fun stuff comes along: ‘command building’. The aim of command building is simple. Fly yourself to as many places outside of your comfort zone as you can within the hours that you have and test the skills and techniques you have learned along the way. It is made even more fun by that fact that you can take your peers and go further together, seeing how each of you flies and works together as a team.