Learn to Fly: Angeles City Flying Club

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Learn to Fly: Angeles City Flying Club

"Now I'm looking to the sky to save me

Looking for a sign of life

Looking for something to help me burn out bright

I'm looking for a complication Looking 'cause I'm tired of lying

Make my way back home when I learn to fly high."

- Foo Fighters, Learn to Fly

People commonly think that learning to fly a plane is one of those impossible aspirations, just relegated to a far away dream that one can only wish for. I was surprised to learn that there was such a thing as the Angeles City Flying Club - a hub for light aircraft hobbyists and pilots and dreamland for those who wants to learn to fly.

The club is composed of trained and experts pilots, light aircraft owners and flying enthusiasts. They offer intro flights for first timers, where they demonstrate the basics of flying a light aircraft and you get to control an actual plane in flight. When I took my intro flight, my captain was an actual commercial pilot based in HK, and he would spend his weekends in Pampanga with the Angeles City Flying club, to get to fly for fun.

The trial intro flight stars at PHP 1,650 for a 15 minute flying experience.

Angeles City Flying Club - Pampanga Rates

What can I saw? It was totally awesome experience!!! The take off, circling around, following the river and approaching the magnificent Mt. Arayat - it all felt so unreal. The closest thing I can compare it to is a roller coaster that seems to move 10x slower but intensity of the rush you feel is 100x more thrilling. Roller coasters happen so fast, there's no time to process how you feel, you just scream your guts out and it's done. But flying a plane - gliding with the wind, seeing the ground moving farther and farther away, your altitude going higher until your view of the land becomes wider and greater - hard to compare this exhilarating feeling to anything else.

With the intro flight too, you get to control the plane! Once in the air, navigation basically involves the pedals which makes the aircraft go right or left, and the hand lever that directs it up or down. The controls are mechanically duplicated or mirrored for the passenger and the pilot - so we both have our own pedals, but if the pilot pushes down, my pedal pushes down too. If I pull the lever, his lever gets pulled too. It's a way of making sure that a wayward student doesn't crash the plane.. because it's quite easy to do that hehe.

Angeles City Flying Club - Pampanga

This is highly recommend for anyone whose dream is to fly! :-)

For more information and map for directions on how to get to the Angeles City Flying Club, see links below. You can also try having lunch at Abe's Farm, - which is in the same town and just about 10mins away from the flying club.