LAA TODAY i FLYING FOR FUN
Come join in the Fun… LAA CEO Steve Slater invites you to join the Association’s happy band of ordinary folk – people just like you – who enjoy Flying for Fun!
H
ello and welcome! The chances are that if you are reading this, you’ve picked up LAA Today at an aviation event, in a flying club, or have been passed it by a friend. So there’s a pretty good chance you, like all of us, are keen on aircraft and flying, and want to know more. So here goes. The headline Flying for Fun is by no means a new one. It dates back to the 1930s when a gentleman named Jack Parham wrote a book on his exploits in a single-seat, 24-hp Aeronca, which he had bought for the princely sum of £95. He explored the skies above Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset for more than a year. He later calculated that it cost him just £28 15/- to fly for the first 100 hours, or £33 10/- with third party insurance! The culture of affordable flying was continued a decade later when, just after WWII,
a group of like-minded enthusiasts formed, in 1946, the Ultra-Light Aircraft Association. It was later renamed the Popular Flying Association and subsequently the Light Aircraft Association. Our members today range from enthusiasts and photographers, to aeroplane restorers and home-builders, aircraft owners and pilots. We’re the largest powered-flying organisation in the country and as such, we’ve been delegated the responsibility by the Civil Aviation Authority for the engineering oversight, inspection and administration of almost 4,500 light aircraft and projects around the UK. And above all, let’s quash any myth that we’re all wealthy, Ray-Ban wearing superheroes (though there are one or two out there that hope they might qualify!). The vast majority of LAA’s 7,800 members are ordinary people like you and I, from all walks of life, united by a simple passion – for flying.
Let’s go fly!
The basics are really very simple; every pilot must hold a licence and every aircraft must be maintained in an airworthy condition, with a valid certificate of airworthiness or LAA Permit to Fly, and it must have at minimum, third-party insurance. So long as these basics are adhered to and you make necessary pre-flight plans, your flying will be safe and legal, and there is generally nothing to stop you getting into your aircraft in much the same way as you get into your car, except that you will enjoy the world from a unique platform. There are areas of restricted airspace, for example around major airports, and busier airfields may have air traffic control wishing to direct you around their skies. Otherwise much of Britain is blessed with ‘uncontrolled airspace’, where you can potter over the countryside simply enjoying the view, or
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