I’d like to learn to fly and was curious how much it costs. If anyone could give me a ballpark figure that would be great. We’re talking small aircraft training here. I know most of the schools offer the first course which is ground training then flight training and then you can take an advanced instrument training course.
Thanks!
Most schools don’t offer “ground training” before flight training. You just jump right into flying and take ground training as you need it.
Here are some very rough rates:
Plane $75 hour + instructor $25 - $30 hour + supplies and textbooks ($300 total) + medical exam ($80 - $100)
You need a minimum of 40 flight hours to qualify for a private pilot’s license. 20 of those has to be with an instructor. In reality, you will need 50 - 60 flight hours total.
You can pay as you go and take a couple of years if you need to although doing it faster eliminates some redundant instruction.
Figure $6000 - $8000 as a reasonable estimate.
I second that. When I was researching FBO (Fixed Based Operators) they all tell you the minimums. Unless you can dedicate several straight months I doubt you can get away with less than $6,000.
Although you can start lessons without a medical certificate I suggest you get it out of the way first. Don’t wait until you solo, get it soon. I know one student who waited and the Dr. wouldn’t sign off because he had an irregular heartbeat. He had almost 20 hours under his belt at that time. If he had been checked out first he could have saved some money not to mention discovering a medical problem.
The only thing I can think to add is make sure you have renters insurance. Most FBO’s only cover damage that relates to the airplane itself. The premiums can vary from $500.00 up to a $1,000.00.
Have Fun Up There!
:eek: 6-8 G’s! Wow. I knew it would be costly but seeing it just made my heart stop. Guess I’d better start saving. I got a call today from one school about an hour from my home. They claim to be rated 5th in the country for students obtaining licensure and post training employment. They seemed eager to enroll a lot of women claiming that almost every single woman they’ve ever trained has successfully obtained her license and several have gone on to become captains of commercial airliners. (I hope they weren’t yanking my chain)
I’m still going to shop around. I have a couple I can choose from.
This is a life-long dream of mine and I am going to do this.
You might want to see if there any flying clubs in the area. They will likely offer cheaper rental rates. (my club offers rates which are almost half of what the nearest FBO has. Granted I also pay dues and such which is cheaper depends on how much one flies but in a training situation (which you SHOULD be flying a lot) it definitely was a cheaper way to go.
Brian
I am sure you will find a way. Keep in mind however, that most of the costs associated with flight training aren’t unique to training but are a part of flying itself. Airplane fees, insurance, medical fees, exam fees, and even instruction fees don’t go away after you get your license. Nobody ever said it was a cheap hobby but is among the best ones. If you can save $100 a week, then that would allow you to start flying right away and continue straight through to the end (weather delays will make some weeks unflyable and allow you to save a bit).
Thanks for the info, guys! Maybe we’ll pass each other in the air someday. (At a safe distance, of course. 
)
Yes, you should budget at least $6,000 to $8,000. Some people spend even more than that.
MOST people are completely the program in 60-80 hours. I took even longer, becuase I started, stopped, started, stopped… this is also more expensive. (Little things like ill relatives, job issues, moving from one state to another cause problems for me).
Save up the money, then go for it. But realize some costs will continue ever afterward. Flying isn’t cheap, but it can be affordable if you know how to budget.
Larger schools aren’t always the best route. First, try to figure out what you want to do with this new, expensive hobby - “just” a hobby? New carerr? What? That can have a large impact on where you go for lessons. Good training is available in many environments, but if you have some idea where you’re headed you can find training best suited to your personal goals.
Ditto what Broomstick said about determining your flying goals.
One option no one has mentioned is buying your own plane . No wait, come back. It really can be the cheapest option. (2 of my students have done this).
If you’re interested in a Private license just “because you’ve always wanted to learn to fly” the rental route is probably best. But if your goals include a Commercial certificate and a career, then you probably should at least consider buying a plane.
Consider the following (very rough) summary:
250 hours as a renter (to get Private, Instrument, Commercial) @ ~110/hr = $27500.00
250 hours as an owner @ 9 gph (assume 4 bucks/gallon) = $9000.00 + 2250.00 for the CFI
I know, I know, I’m not including maintenance, tie-down, and the actual purchase price. But let’s consider them.
You will most likely recover your purchase price when re-selling your plane (I owned mine for several years, and sold it for the exact purchase price). So I’m going to call this one a wash (except for losing the interest on your investment)
Even if maintenance runs 2500/year, you’ll still be ahead arond 8K, even if you take 4 years to complete everything.
If my memory serves, I paid 115/month for tiedown at a decent-sized field here in N Texas (FTW).
My own experience, and that of my two students leads me to believe that owning an airplane is (paradoxically) the cheapest way to learn to fly.
PS. The missus and I are actually considering re-joining the ranks of airplane owners because PullinSon is wanting flying lessons. He’s determined to go all the way to commercial and it seems the cheapest route is to buy a small Cessna. Helluva hi-school graduation present, eh? :rolleyes:
I should clarify a few things, lest ya’ll believe the Pullins are about to hie ourselves down to the Cessna plant and plunk down a quarter-mil for a plane.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Our former plane was a Cherokee, purchased by us and our neighbors for 28K (14000 each). Splitting the cost of maintenance, tie-down, etc made this quite affordable. The craft we’re considering for PullinSon’s training are in the vicinity of 20-25K (good used IFR C-152). I (hope) to mitigate the cost by putting it into the rental fleet at the FBO where I teach.
(Didn’t want to leave the wrong impression with my previous post)
Further to the suggestion that you examine your goals: Perhaps the beauty and adventure of flying is what’s most attractive to you, and not its transportation/career possibilities.
If so, you should perhaps consider soaring (flying unpowerd aircraft known both as gliders and sailplanes). If you join a club you can likely do this for less (perhaps substantially less) than you’d spend on power flying lessons (with the tradeoff being the time you’ll spend helping others in the club). Some clubs have “scholarships” (i.e. financial assistance) earmarked for youth and women.
For clubs in your area (and other info) check the website of the Soaring Society of America (SSA).
Compare it to the cost of, say, a new car. Or college tuition. Yes, it can be a large lump the first time you look at it, but people of modest means routinely buy more expensive items than a pilot’s license.
That’s wonderful! Now ask yourself - do I want a career in aviation?
Everybody has to pass the same test/checkride to get that private license, but training with the intent to earn a living is somewhat different than training to fly as personal entertainment. As an example - a career oriented program will lean you towards bigger, faster, higher, and newer airplanes, which is fine. I, on the other hand, am leaning towards smaller, slower, lower, and older airplanes because that’s what I, personally, enjoy flying. Career programs tend to work in an environment with heavy contact with air traffic control. I, on the other hand, almost never talk to air traffic control and my skills for non-towered fields are quite important. If you want a career in flying you’ll need to master GPS and glass cockpits. If you do what I do, you’ll need to master map and compass navigation. You can’t learn to fly jets at my current flight school, that’s true, but places where they teach you to fly jets can’t teach you to fly tailwheels and don’t have a Stearman biplane for rent, either.
Oddly enough, you can get a job flying what I fly - after all, I’m hiring instructors, aren’t I? - but you’ll never make really big bucks at it.
VERY good idea!
You can do it!
If you want a career in aviation, consider joining the military - you’ll get trained for free, get paid, and when you get out you’ll be ready made to join a commercial airline.
You can do what i did, and that was chauffeur a person around in his/her private airplane while s/he sleeps. Well, I didn’t actually get my license from that, but i did get to learn to fly for free. Well, not free if you don’t count the fact that I wasn’t paid.
But that was a unique opportunity - don’t know if you can find something like that elsewhere.
I would like to point out the headquarters of the SSA is based in my hometown. It’s not often that i get to mention anything special about my hometown, so there it is.
And I suspect it’s not often that someone from Hobbs NM posts on the SDMB.
Remember: You don’t have to come up with it all at once. You should fly at least once a week though. Figure $400 or $500 per month, minimum.
FWIW, there are few things I find sexier than a woman who flies.
But who’s noticed before? Maybe we should have some sort of counter to keep track. We could call it a Hobbs meter.
[sub]Nice one, Xema! 
[/sub]
Pay close attention to what Broomstick said about it taking longer if you don’t go continuously and regularily. I started on my private license and did so on a one lesson per week schedule, which was what I could afford at the time. The school I went to used bad weather days to move you along in the ground school part of things (navigation, etc. for the written part of the test). But the kicker is that there is a real ‘feel’ to flying that you need to keep at regularily to keep improving at. Miss a couple of lessons in the winter because of bad weather, and not only do your skills not improve, but they quickly start to deteriorate. Then when you get back in the pilot seat, you’re flying like crap and your instructor isn’t going to move you along to the next step in the process because you haven’t mastered the task at hand. Ditto things coming up, sickness, ill relatives.
Also be aware that to keep your skills honed to where you are safe to be in the air, and to stay checked off to carry passengers of any kind, you’ve got to keep flying regular after you earn your license. Though I enjoyed flying, I wasn’t able to make it a part of my life on a regular basis for ever (or until I lost interest). For me, I would have had to be wanting a career in aviation to finish out the license.
-rainy
I took one lesson a week. When the instructor decided I was ready for the flight test, I had only 38 hours. He sent me on another cross-country to get the hours. Of course, I flew quite a bit with dad growing up. Also, I lived in the desert so I got lots of practice with crosswinds and every lesson day was sunny. (I did have to cancel a few times because of high winds though.) I was talking with my ex-fiancée about flying helicopters. I was hovering at the end of my first (two-hour) lesson. Not well, but I was able to hover generally over a spot. She said that she and the rest of her class in the Army took about 15 hours. Maybe I’m a quick-learner, but I’ve heard most people take 50-60 hours to get their licenses. (Note: I took longer than I should have in the helicopter because I couldn’t quite get the landings down. The take-off was good, the pattern was good, the approach was good, the flare was good… But I had trouble with the actual touchdown. I finally realised – and my instructor didn’t – that I was trying to make the actual landing like an airplane. Wasted a few hours there, but I finally got it.)
An option for ground school may be your local community college. Costs vary, but in California my ground school at Antelope Valley College only cost $50. I completed ground school before I started flight training.
Slight nitpick. You need a student pilot’s certificate to start lessons. The SPC is your third-class medical.
Not in the US, you don’t. You do need one to solo, but not for dual instruction.
But it is a good idea to get the medical out of the way early, in case there are any nasty surprises that would affect your certifiability. If you’ll never be able to get a first or second class medical, you’d better not plan to be a professional pilot.