Each Young Eagle Flight participant receives a free coupon to Sporty's Online Private Pilot Ground School. This course can qualify you to take the FAA Private Pilot Written Exam. In addition, two other online flight training providers have donated access to their courses that integrate with our flight simulators: Pilotinstitute.com and True Course Simulations.
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Let's talk about the options, timing and requirements: You must be 17 to get a private pilot's license (16 for a glider pilots license). You can solo at 16 (15 for a glider pilot student). You are also required to take the Private pilots written exam which can be taken prior to flight training, but once taken the results are good for two years. Flight training is best done in continuous, repetitive sessions. However, the weather in Northern Michigan in the fall and winter months makes regular training in those months difficult, so we recommend scheduling the start of your flight training in the spring of the year with a target completion of October of that year.

So that creates an optimum timeline that looks like this:
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- At age 15 or later study for your Private Pilot written
- At age 16 or later take the private pilot written
- Start your flight training in the spring of the year you turn 17

To assist our Young Eagles in accomplishing these goals, we hold twice monthly mentoring sessions for students 15 and older to answer questions and help students understand the material. These sessions will be held at the Legacy Aviation Learning Center at 2640 Aero Park Drive, Traverse City starting on Tuesday Oct 15th with an introductory session: "So, you want to be a pilot". This session will start at 6:30PM.

Our Ground school mentoring session will be held on the second & fourth Tuesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:00PM at our offices at Legacy Aviation Learning Center. Pre-registration is required. Our first session of this series will start on Tuesday November 12th. This program is targeted to prepare the student to be able to take the FAA Knowledge Exam (AKA the "Private Pilot Written") in April. This will require a significant commitment on the students part to completing the home study material in a timely and regular manner. Previous students have compared the difficulty of this course material to a HS AP course. However, students who take a disciplined approach to mastering the ground school content, and who take advantage of our Pilot Mentoring Program, will have no problem passing the FAA Knowledge Exam.  

Registration is available here: https://youngeaglesday.org?12182

Contact us YoungEagles@eaa234.org for further information