Thread by @XylaFoxlin

I'm seeing a ton of jokes about learning to fly but being broke on twitter today and I can't tell if they're serious but if they are LET ME TELL YOU A STORY.

It took me 11 years to save up and get my PPL. I started working illegally in the food industry at 13, and never stopped.

I've known this is what I wanted to do for as long as I remember. When I was ~10ish I took my first flight through the @EAA Young Eagles program where kids get a free flight, and that totally sealed the deal.

My first job was at a take-out restaurant when I was 13. By 15 I had 5 part-time jobs on top of school, and by 16 I landed a gig trading hours at an airport 1-1.5hrs from my home for flight time. For every 20 hours I worked, I got an hour in this beautiful bird.

I did ~60hrs/wk as a ramp rat, earning ~3hrs/wk flight time. My boss was really kind and let me come along and log photo flights, maintenance flights, etc for free, so I got a little extra. I swapped my part time jobs to weekends so I could still earn money.

I soloed on New Years Eve of 2013 at 17, having earned all my flight time on line crew. I still didn't have enough $ to finish my PPL though, and I decided to go to college for engineering out of state. So I quit flying for 6 years which was the WORST

I won a $5k fellowship grant in 2019 that I hadn't budgeted into my survival for the year, so I put it aside and decided to use it all on flight training. I went back and started from practically zero, and re-soloed in 10 hrs. Got through my solo xc and ran out of money again

Shortly after that, I was contacted by a YouTube manager who suggested I leave the channel I had been working on and start one on my own. It would also let me move to CA, but I knew I'd HAVE to finish my PPL in Ohio where I could *maybe* afford it

So yeah, I took like a month off of making videos, put the very last of my lifelong savings into it, and finished my PPL a week before leaving for Los Angeles

So alls that to say, it IS possible to be a broke pilot with enough determination, grit, and steadfast knowledge that this is what you want to do. I got really lucky but also i worked insanely hard for literally most of my life.

And also if you're making these jokes to be diminutive toward the "rich", maybe don't?

And ALSO, money aside, learning to be a pilot is HARD and it's A LOT OF WORK. Is it worth it? Absofuckinglutely. But it's not a random weekend project and shouldn't be treated as such

I literally have no idea what the vibe on the memes is but I *think* they are all positive and I am so SO excited to see so much interest in General Aviation. So tweet questions at me anytime, I would LOVEEEE to see more folks airborne!!!!