After you’ve soloed, you’re thinking “hey that wasn’t so hard, maybe I really can do this!” Of course you can. This next phase is a lot of fun and a lot of work. It requires a lot more practice, and now you can do that practice on your own in one of our airplane simulators. As before, your practice sessions in the plane will be much more beneficial, efficient, and most importantly, safer if you rehearse your entire practice session first on the ground with us.
When you’re ready to take those solo cross country flights, you'll be glad you're a member of the Learn2Fly4Less “club." For most of us, the hardest (and scariest) part of our solo cross country flights was the uncertainty of flying into an unfamiliar area and locating the airport is in relation to the rest of the terrain. Even after you’ve made dozens of cross country flights, it's always much easier to fly to an airport you’ve been to a number of times. Even today, 35 years after I did my first solo cross country flight, I always try to “fly” to, from and all around a new airport in one of our simulators a day or two before my trip. With our incredibly realistic scenery, it's easy to get a feel for the area--where the major landmarks are in relation to the airport, how the traffic pattern feels, and how long the runway really is (rather than just referring to a number on a map). You can even simulate the density altitude of the airport by setting the temperature to be what is forecast for the day of your flight. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what density altitude is right now. You will know it well very soon.)
At this point your confidence level will be sky high (sorry, couldn’t resist) and your tension and nervousness will be much lower if you “fly” to your destinations the safest way--on the ground in one of our simulators. It's a big bonus to have this key part of your training be more enjoyable and less stressful. While some might argue that confidence can be a bad thing in flying, the only time that might be true is if one is “over” confident, and therefore careless or even reckless. At this point in your training, I can’t really imagine anyone being overconfident, and thus I feel certain of my claim that this is the safest way to make your solo cross country flights.
Others might consider this “cheating” because your flights will not be to an airport you’ve never flown to before. But you did make that flight for the first time. You just did it in a simulator. Trust me, when you can’t seem to find that airport and you feel as if you might be a bit lost temporarily, your heart will race almost as much in the simulator as it would in an airplane. It is never cheating to be as prepared as possible for a flight.