Although learning to be a pilot is a great challenge, it's not actually all that difficult, and it doesn't require any particular personal or physical skills. In fact, the most difficult thing about learning to fly is deciding which type of flying you're going to do.

If you are a complete beginner the best place to start is to read Seager Publishing's Learn to Fly Guide, which has all the details on the various options. Click here to order your copy

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Visit our Student Pilots forum and see what people are saying - and ask your own questions!

Here are a few quick points to bear in mind

• Even if your ultimate ambition is to fly for an airline, your career path will start with flying small aircraft
• Flying is fun, so even if you aren't sure that you want to fly for a career, you can still learn to fly and can an pilot aircraft as a 'private' pilot
• Flying costs money, but you can tailor your flying opportunities to your budget. Maybe gliding (which has a huge number of challenges and rewards of its own) would suit you best. Or microlighting? Or parascending?
• Most people take the sensible decision to pay for their flying lessons on a lesson-by-lesson basis which means that there's not too much investment up-front, and that you can stop (although we don't see why you'd want to) whenever you like. There are even mechanisms to allow you to pick up again later