Welcome to Carlisle Flight Training. We are a small friendly family run flying school and aero club, we have recently undergone a refurbishment so we are quite proud of our new shiny club house and welcome everybody who drops in.

Alan Rayson
Alan Rayson (mum) is Chief Flying Instructor, and has been flying for over 17 years and with over 4,500 instructional flying hours has quietly sat through many peoples early attempts at flying. Alan has flown and instructed in a variety of aircraft and taught a wide range of people from 80 year olds to a spell teaching RAF Cadets. Alan is also our Flight and Ground Examiner for the PPLs and IMC ratings, making him a drink is always a good move!

Helen Rayson,
Helen started at Carlisle airport in 1997 working in the bar, then moving into the tower and then finally she moved on to become one of the only female civilian refuellers in the U.K. Unfortunately the glamour of overalls, steel toe caps and freezing winters wasn’t strong enough to keep her outside and she is now a slave to the central heating and sunbathing running CFT. We keep threatening to teach her to fly, so she’s joining the ranks of the student pilots too

Tom Vaughan
Tom has been flying since he was 15 with his first licence issued on his 17th birthday, all in all a good way to misspend some youth! Since then he has worked at Carlisle Airport in various roles whilst gaining further qualifications, he now has a Commercial Licence and is Instrument Rated on single and multi engine aircraft.
During recent years he has flown around most areas of the UK and in many other European countries. He instructs for the PPL and Night Qualification

Allan Bryers
Allan is our Rotary Instructor. With over 4,500 hours he has ratings on the R22, R44, Bell 206 and the 206 Long Ranger. Since learning to fly in the 90’s, he has flown in a variety of different environments including at night, and flying abroad in countries such as Hungary, Austria, Germany and France. He also has extensive experience in mountain flying, advanced navigation and talking about the above, be prepared!

Steve McNaught Steve has been flying for 10 years, he did his PPL here at Carlisle and completed his commercial training at Perth. Steve has extensive worldwide experience including flying in The U.S.A. and Canda whilst there he gained his Canadian Commercial licence. Steve is one of the newest members of the team at Carlisle Flight Training, he joined us in June 2005.

Keith Lister
Part time Instructor, Examiner,
Multi Engine pilot extraordinaire and
mad professor, with over 21000 hours to
his credit, Keith has been passing his
knowledge on to students for 24 years.
Some of the types on Keith's Licence are
ATR42, ATR72, SD360s,
all Piper Twins and the Jet Provost

Alan Pattinson Alan started flying
in the late 1970's and came to it through
skydiving at Kirkbride, Cark, Tilstock
and Peterborough, gaining his licence at
Blackpool where he instructed for a while
afterwards and has flown in France,
the USA and the Channel Islands since.
He flies both single and multi-engined 
aircraft and his hobby is also flying
.......a Jet Provost.

Sam Capie
Sam is our “Hangar Rat”, his job entails washing, towing and generally doing all of the lowly aeroplane tasks associated with a light aviation apprenticeship. Through this, Sam soloed on his 16th birthday and gained his PPL shortly after his 17th and is now building his experience flying club aircraft. Not satisfied with the lack of things to hit in the sky the next challenge is taking to the road and learning to drive...

Raoul, Aubrey and the Reindeer
Aubrey the Ferret came to live with us early in 2006 from Luxemburg, he was originally a way to try and persuade Alan (mum) to allow us to have a club pet, it hasn’t worked yet! Rauol and the Reindeer have refused to move out since they came to stay at Christmas, we don’t mind, they don’t cost much to feed and are house trained!

One Million people worldwide already know how to fly; people just like you, people who have learned for pleasure or business, not including military or airline pilots, so that's a lot of people like you. These people have discovered flying is not reserved for only the wealthy and super humans among us, so in becoming pilots they have found a brand new world which is challenging, stimulating and rewarding. It is estimated that 8000 people will start learning to fly this year; you could be one of them?

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