Get a pilot license in 20 hours and for $340 bucks

by Jerry Guo on

At some point in the last couple of years, chances are you’ve come across the term “very light jets” or the catchy acronym VLJ. These are Chevy Suburban-sized planes that let you avoid the hassles of flying commercial.

But what about the flip-side of this trend towards the ultra-small? I’m talking about propeller planes that fit only two passengers and weigh less than 1,300 pounds. To encourage people to get a pilot’s license, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has come up with a new class of licenses for these “sports planes.”

Instead of the standard 40 hours of flight-time instruction as well as many hundreds of dollars you’ll have to pay, you can get the sports pilot license in 20 hours and for a couple hundred of dollars. Best of all, these sports planes can cost half as less as conventional planes: $80,000 instead of something like $200,000.

Hell, even I can afford to do this (maybe).

%Gallery-15647%

Curious to know what it’s like to fly a 757 for a commercial airline? Follow along with Gadling’s resident pilot, Kent Wien, in Cockpit Chronicles.

The Rise of the Air Taxi?

by Iva Skoch on

Get ready for traffic jams in the sky! Small airlines flying so-called “Light Jets” or “Very Light Jets” (VLJs) are springing up and expanding service. They operate these fleets as “air-taxis” or “air-cabs,” the idea being that you fly in a small jet (or small turbo-prop) plane from a small regional airport, with up to 11 other passengers, travel on-demand (when you want), and pay approximately full-coach prices. As the “taxi” fills up, each passenger pays less.

The business model may work because these jets cost so much less than larger airliners. For example, the Eclipse VJL can cost as little as $1.7m (wait, let me get my checkbook), which allows these airlines to charge as little as $600 per hour, or, alternatively, $1-3 per mile per passenger, up to 1000 miles. They also operate out of tiny airports, such as Teterboro (NJ) or Hanscom Field (MA), which saves them money, and passengers time.

Recently, Linear Air, a Boston-based airtaxi service, expanded their service to the DC area (Manassas). They even offer service to Puerto Rico.

SATSair offers a similar type of service and is based in South Carolina. Other competitors include DayJet, out of Florida, and Pogo, started by former American Airlines CEO Crandall.