The process of visa took only a month which was very satisfactory.
When arriving in Miami, the driver from Flying Academy was waiting for me and took me straight to the accommodation. The house was decent in a big villa with a swimming pool. The staff was as helpful as those in Prague and they would help me with everything, from sim card to ordering food.
The first flight took place after my license was certified by the FAA. After only five hours of introductory flight, I was finally signed off to explore Florida.
Tamiami Airport was an amazingly huge airport with hundreds of planes scattered around.
The first flights were quite challenging considering the constant traffic. You had to be fully alert to get your voice to the controllers, and it should be as abbreviated as possible; which took me a few days to adapt to.
The adventure began with the perfect weather in Miami. It was almost possible to fly every day. I would book a plane for five hours and the plane was mine for the whole day. I would take off from Tamiami and request a flight following to my destination. Also, with there being no landing fee, I would do a touch-and-go in any runway that came within my view.
Another great advantage was the prices which were considerably lower than CZ, and it allowed me to get a type rating on Piper which was way better than Cessna 152. I’m sure you can relate.
One of the most thrilling moments was when I was going to land in an international airport and I could see that an Airbus A320 was waiting for me to land :D.
In every airport, there was a pilot lounge where you could chill, drink coffee, and enjoy the treat which gave me the feeling of being a commercial pilot, especially when jet pilots were all over the place.
I would recommend this amazing experience for every student pilot, because it helped me to improve my communication immensely. Also, I got to learn how to provide location report, since there were many uncontrolled airports which didn’t have ATC and you had to coordinate yourself with other pilots using UNICOM frequency.
I got to explore major cities in Florida such as Tampa and Orlando since every airport was providing a crew car which you could take for two hours free of charge.
Flying over NASA and landing nearby and visiting the Kennedy space center was one of the greatest experiences.
Abdollah Mohammadpour, Flying Academy student pilot
