This may be the most important question! While every student and situation is different, you can get an idea of expected costs based on the following information. Instruction is done in flight and ground lessons and based on the duration of the lesson rather than a flat lesson rate because lesson lengths will vary.

Our training aircraft rents for $150/hr and flight and ground instruction is $50/hr. That means that when you’re flying with an instructor, you’re paying $200/hr, if you’re flying solo/renting, it’s $150/hr, and ground lessons and pre-/post-flight time is $50/hr.

For a private pilot certificate, the FAA requires a student to have a minimum of 40 hours of flight time. Of that, at least 20 hours must be with an instructor and at least 10 hours must be solo. If a student were to complete the training with 25 hours of instruction and 15 hours of solo time, that would equate to about $7,250, plus a little extra for briefs, ground training ahead of the checkride, etc. Additional costs include an online ground school to prepare for your written test, the written test itself, medical exam, and checkride fee paid to the examiner. All-in-one a student doing things as efficiently as possible would be paying around $10,000 for their private pilot certificate.

That’s based on the *minimum* of 40 hours. The best estimate for how many hours the average student take is 60-75 hours, which increases the total cost by 50% to 100%. Can it be done in 40 hours? Absolutely! But it would be misleading to say that it is likely. How can you keep your costs down and training hours closer to that 40 hour minimum?

• Fly at least twice per week. Flying requires you to gain new muscle memory skills. If you don’t fly often these skills fade and we have to repeat training tasks rather than moving on to new tasks.
• Use an online ground school for written test prep, and do it diligently! If you only fly the plane and delay the written test, you will unfortunately miss a lot of knowledge that is best learned in tandem. You’ll also get to a point where your flight training is done but we have to keep flying to stay proficient while waiting to do your test. It’s a great idea to do both the ground school and flight training at the same time as the knowledge between the two will help reinforce what you’re learning.
• Ask questions! We will absolutely do our best to guide you and tell you everything you need to know along the way, but if we’ve missed something, you didn’t understand something, or you just want to get ahead of things, please ask. There’s a lot of nuance to flight training and it’s really different from most other things you may have done, so having questions is definitely expected.

While there’s no solid answer to the question, hopefully this helps to shine some light on expectations. If you would like more information, please do reach out!