Takeoff briefing completed - ready for departure

Cockpit Briefing - Tiny summary

A bit scary, a lot wonderful — my very first flight in a SEP (Single Engine Piston) airplane, and the official start of my pilot licence education.

The Moment - Story telling

After finishing my computer science degree in late summer, I finally did the thing I had been putting off for years: I started flight training.

The decision to finish my degree first was deliberate — but that didn’t make the waiting any easier. Every semester felt like one more lap around the runway without ever taking off.

Most PPL programmes ease you in slowly: ground school first, simulators, checklists. But my first lesson skipped straight to the point. A short talk about aerodynamics, an emergency briefing, and then — take the left seat. Let’s go.

My instructor’s words before we lined up on the runway:

“For your first flight, just rest your hand softly on the stick and feel the movement. Once we’re airborne, you can take control and fly by yourself.”

And so I did. Flying — actually flying — by myself. On day one 🎉.

The Lesson - What did you learn?

Engine start — taxi — prepare for departure — take off — enjoy.

My first honest thought sitting in that cockpit: “Oh dear, THIS is how you start an airplane engine?” 😂

Mixture rich. Prime according to the prime table. Throttle cracked open half a centimetre. Starter engage. It’s nothing like turning a car key and waiting for the engine to catch. It reminded me of starting a small moped back in the day… a little ritual, a little patience, a little faith. Funny how old technology echoes.

After that, things move fast. Taxi to the holding point, then an engine run-up: a procedure where you bring the engine to a specific high RPM and check that both magnetos, the two independent ignition circuits, are working correctly. It’s a simple test, but it’s the moment where you feel the airplane shift from “machine sitting on the ground” to “thing that is about to fly.”

Then: cleared for takeoff. A surprisingly short roll, and the ground just falls away.

Once airborne, my instructor handed me the controls to work through the four fundamentals of flight: straight and level, turns, climbs, and descents. I can’t quite describe how natural it felt. Turns, nose up, nose down. I liked it immediately. More than I expected.

Navigation was humbling though. My instructor pointed at the landscape below and asked: “Describe what you see — where are we?” From the ground, finding your village on a map is trivial. From 3’000 feet, every cluster of rooftops looks identical. I’m getting there, flight by flight.

Then, after the airwork, it was time to head back.

Preparing for landing is its own rhythm: configure the airplane, follow the approach, and then speed. That speed. Not a knot too fast, not a knot too slow. The runway grows in the windshield and everything narrows down to one number on the airspeed indicator.

Then the flare. A gentle pull, let the ground come to you, and a soft touchdown. Back where we started, but somehow completely different people than the ones who taxied out an hour ago.

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One more thing worth mentioning: you’re rarely alone in that cockpit. Most flights have a second student sitting in the rear seat, observing passively. It sounds like a small detail, but it’s surprisingly effective. You learn just as much from watching someone else navigate a procedure (or make a mistake) as you do from doing it yourself. Passive learning, active results.

The Personal Part

Flying isn’t new to me. A few years ago I earned my glider pilot licence, an education that, depending on weather and how much time you can invest, takes one to two years, or roughly one to two summers. Gliding is a beautiful sport with genuinely challenging moments: finding the right patch of sky, reading the thermals, deciding whether to climb or to commit to a landing. I loved it. But during my computer science degree I had to put it on pause… not enough time, not enough summers. I always knew I’d come back to it. That certainty kept me going through the harder semesters. But I also always wanted more. More range. Independence from thermic weather. And one day, the ability to take friends along on a trip. A glider does none of those things. So I decided, long before I finished my degree, that my next step would be the PPL for single engine piston aircraft. That said, the glider affection never went away. One day, I’ll be back in that silent cockpit too.

One Takeaway

After every lesson, my instructors debriefs with a simple rule: three positives, one thing to improve. That’s it. It sounds almost too optimistic at first. Surely there’s more to fix than one thing? But that’s exactly the point. You did more right than you think. You just have to look for it. Take those three wins with you, pick the one most important thing to work on next flight, and leave the rest behind. One step. Then the next. Then the next. It keeps your head up, your motivation intact, and your focus on what actually matters, instead of drowning in everything that wasn’t perfect yet.