A students grateful success story with Easy PPL

We get all sorts of help requests from students - some trivial, some about a specific topic for a course, and sometimes, we get a true cry for help.

We thought we'd share this story with you since it might touch a nerve - and also goes to show just how much we care here at Easy PPL to helping you in every way we can, and what we truly mean by the "one to one" instructor support you get right here at Easy PPL.

This is a true story, and the email exchanges below are word for word. To avoid any embarrassement, we've called this student "Arthur", but "Nigel" from Easy PPL is a real person - see our Meet the Team page. We've also redacted the name of some other study providers Arthur was using so we don't "knock" the other providers in this area unecessarily.

So here we go - here's where the story starts.....

Arthur contacts us via the Contact Us page at Easy PPL on a very recent SUNDAY evening with the following:

"Hello, forgive me for bothering you I really do apologise. I feel like I’m really struggling with the most basic and important pieces of air law. To give you a background I’ve read the xxxxx books for the subjects of air law, meteorology, human performance and operational procedures. I feel like nothing really goes in and stays there although my partner will disagree completely but I can tell you for certain if you made me go do a practise test now id fail so bad you would want to call my instructor.

Air law I of course need to pass to go solo with operational procedures and my instructor says I’m about 4 exercises away he wants my medical and these first 2 tests passed as soon as possible. I’m worried about my medical anyway as I have an eye condition but my AME says it shouldn’t be an issue. So I bought the air law course, and it was going ok I felt as if using easy PPL give me more context and explanations to what the book did previously.

But recently I have been performing so badly I’m really embarrassed and frustrated at myself. I thought this was helping at first but now I feel its just beating the confidence right out me and I cannot even answer the most basic of questions correctly. VMC minima and the 500ft and 100ft rules. I read Human Performance and I felt confident with this one having read the book and practised using the mock test book, but id still fail. However, id pass the odd one to give me vein hope.

Operational procedures I felt like I was doing ok until the part of contaminated runways came along and id get just over half marks at the end of the chapter. And my scores in the practise tests (from xxxxx) still fall short of the pass mark showing me I still need a lot of work to be done on this one I just feel I’m really at a loss with my studies now not sure how to make any more progress. I try to learn off the incorrect answers, but I do not want to just remember the answers I want the knowledge so my flying can be as safe and as optimised as possible.

At this point I feel I am just venting and I really am sorry for wasting your time."

The same evening (it's a SUNDAY remember), Nigel makes contact with Arthur via email and suggests:

"Hi Arthur,

We are here to help so don’t panic. I can see two major problems from what you have said.

The first is that you are using more than one study resource. We come across this time and time again with students where they use us and xxxxx, and look on the net too. That’s bad news. It’s bad because every provider describes things in a slightly different way. My advice; put the books in the drawer and just use our material, and don’t go browsing the subject on google!

Second up, you are studying for too many subjects at the same time. Chill. Study for Air Law first, then do the official exam. Then study for Ops, then do that exam. Forget all the other subjects for the moment. Just one at a time until you pass the official exam at the flying school, then move on to the next.

The best order to study the subjects is detailed on this Guidance Page.

For a great way of how to use our material see this FlyBytes video. Follow it. Don’t keep going back over the same stuff before you move on else you’ll never get to the end. Air Law is a bit like a chicken and egg – once you’ve done ALL the course, then ALL of it makes more sense!

Try it this way – you’ll be pleasantly surprised I reckon."

Arthur did as Nigel suggested, and we're delighted to have received this email back from him the other day:

Hi Nigel

Thank you for your reply. I can’t believe I’m saying this but today I passed Air Law with a 100%. I took your advice and it paid off massively my confidence just continued to grow and I’m now hungrier than ever for the next one.

I want to thank you and your team because this means so much more than you realise. I’ve wanted to do this since I was young my main goal was to be a fighter pilot but due to my eyes it unfortunately wasn’t possible. Also people constantly doubted my ability and i listened to them. That is until i met my partner who believed in me and said i can do this.

Il be starting to study operational procedures soon. Thank you so much."

A true success story from Easy PPL.