Forty minutes to Victoria, and nobody to ask permission.

Lunch up the coast, home before dark. Your family on the island without the ferry queue.

A Saturday, from Boundary Bay

Straight-line at 110 knots — the cruise of the aeroplane most students learn in.

Victoria15 minBreakfast, and home before the morning is over · 3 hours by ferry and road on the ground

Friday Harbor20 minThe San Juans, and your first flight into the States · a ferry and a border crossing on the ground

Nanaimo20 minThe island without the queue · 2 hours if the ferry cooperates on the ground

Whistler35 minMountains on both sides the whole way up · 2 hours up the Sea-to-Sky on the ground

Powell River40 minThe Sunshine Coast, which is barely reachable otherwise · two ferries and most of a day on the ground

Tofino60 minAcross the island, surf on the other side · 6 hours and a ferry on the ground

What you would fly

Counted across all 26 schools.

Cessna 17259%146 aeroplanes at 21 schools · typically 1975

Cessna 15221%53 aeroplanes at 12 schools · typically 1980

Piper Seneca4%10 aeroplanes at 5 schools · typically 1977

Piper Cherokee4%9 aeroplanes at 7 schools · typically 1970

Diamond DA422%6 aeroplanes at 4 schools · typically 2008

Four in five are a Cessna 172 or a 152, and most were built in the seventies. Simple, forgiving, and the reason a licence earned here transfers anywhere.

The licence is where it starts

Most things you learn as an adult plateau. Flying keeps opening up — every rating makes the aeroplane useful in a way it was not the week before. Take them in any order, or stop wherever suits you.

Private licenceWhere everyone starts. Take your family up, in daylight, in good weather.

Night ratingMost people's next one. The same aerodrome is a different place after dark.

Instrument ratingThe biggest jump of the lot. Cloud stops deciding your weekend.

Commercial licenceThe one that lets somebody pay you to fly.

Instructor ratingHow most professional pilots build their first thousand hours — and the fastest way to get good.

Multi-engineTwo engines, and the aeroplanes most first jobs are flown in.

And most of it is not ratings at all. A new type, a mountain course, your first trip into a busy control zone. Nobody hands you a certificate for those and they are most of what actually changes.

Your own city stops looking familiar

The bridge you sit on every morning is a line. The river you cross without thinking has islands in it. The map you have carried since childhood quietly redraws itself.

From behind the left seat of a light aircraft: a student flying with the Fraser River, Vancouver and the North Shore mountains spread out ahead through the windscreen. — Inbound over the Fraser, Vancouver ahead.

What people actually get out of it

A skill you keep: Five take-offs and landings every six months to carry passengers. It is a standard you go on meeting rather than a certificate on a wall, and that is why it still feels earned years later.
A real standard: Every rung is measured by an examiner against a published standard. When you pass, you know exactly what you can do — which is rarer than it sounds.
Good company: Aerodromes are unreasonably friendly places. Bad coffee in a hangar on a Sunday morning, with people you would never otherwise have met.

What it takes

Six months to a year. A couple of evenings a week. A medical booked early, two written exams that are not hard, and a stretch where the landings feel worse before they click.

That is the whole list. People with jobs and children and mortgages do this every year.

What it really costs