A LITTLE Bit of good news recently: my student Jay made his first solo flight a little while ago, and I didn’t write about it yet. So here’s my report. Jay started lessons mid way through October and worked steadily around the inevitable winter weather delays and cancellations to make his first flight as Pilot in Command on his fourteenth lesson, on the nineteenth time he’d taken to the air, and after 14.8 hours of flight total.

Unfortunately (for me) I was unavailable that day so my colleague Ivan had the great pleasure of signing him off for that solo flight, denying me one of the great pleasures of a flight instructor which is to climb out of the aircraft and leave their student to fly alone for the very first time – but I’m glad Ivan was able to step in and keep the progress going for Jay. Meanwhile, at the time of writing this, Jay has now made three solo flights so things are going well.