Cost of a PPL

[trey kule]

I happened to be looking at an FTU website tonight and noticed they had an online ground school......for $1100.

Got me to wondering the all in cost of a ppl including a medical, examiners and test fees.

I know its abit hard to estimate, but lets assume. 35 dual and 15 solo.

Maybe that is a bit low. I do not have stats for average hours.

[Scudrunner]

Best guest for the average pilot I would ballpark $10,000

Just jumped on Pro IFR websites and they are showing $225 an Hour dual in a Cessna 152

[David MacRay]

They have waiting lists.

If you two get your instructors ratings, we rent a hangar at bieseker, get some planes, I'll be the dispatcher for our school...

[Colonel]

No one wants good instruction. People just want the cheapest instruction,
because they don't need to learn the knowledge and skill that will keep them
alive. Their lives are worthless, but their feelings are priceless.

[Scudrunner]

“lives are worthless, but their feelings are priceless.”

I think we just found our flight school slogan

[Colonel]

Or how about:



"We've never had one stuck up there, yet!"

[Liquid_Charlie]

Based on 35 hours and the cost of an aircraft purchased, instructor and fuel etc and on 200 hours flying a year and cost of aircraft at $5000 if sure one could have bought one for about half but even then converted to 2020 dollars somewhere between 5 and 6 grand.

Today people are not getting qualified in 35 hours so that adds to the cost but a good percentage of the money is going towards infrastructure. Gone are the simple one room shacks with a pisser and a coffee pot and the freedom to go from car parked to 1000 ft in 10 minutes.

Certainly the cost is higher today but maybe not for all the reasons we perceive. Where would the cost go with professional licenced dedicated instructors as opposed to today's time builders. Obviously you pay more for quality but maybe efficiently in getting a licence in specified time minimums and quality of product would be far better and worth it.

The present systems has a major flaw. It produces pilots who talk the talk but very few can walk the walk. The schools just pump them full of ego driving bullshit.

The schools are geared up for the private to commercial multi-IFR group. I feel that the hobbyist is likely suffering for this mindset. Their goals are to be puppy mills because quantity is more important that quality leaving the honing to when they are hired and in a company training environment. They are generating f/o's not captains.

When I got my commercial there were 2 roads, approved and unapproved which simply translated it 150 hours or 200 hours total. In the unapproved course you managed it all yourself and booked time as you needed it and could fly your own little aircraft when and where you wanted. The approved course you did it through a school. What a great option and experience invaluable because you were making your own decisions and learning from your own generated experiences. You learned to think very quickly.

I learned all about low flying and navigation it became invaluable when I started bashing around Red Lake for my first job. A job that took me from a super cub to a dc3 skipper in 5 years. Maybe a very slow progression by today's standards but back them that was like a bullet. Likely most fun I ever had. Whoring and flying, doesn't get much better than that, right Chuck!!!!

[Liquid_Charlie]

Or how about:

Only if a tailwheel kit it involved

[Colonel]

pilots who talk the talk but very few can walk the walk

No kidding. They talk like this:

One Wheel Landing

But they fly like this:

White Shirt

Then they earn some bucks, and buy their way into a warbird
organization and do this ON GRASS

A pilot's lack of recent experience led to the crash landing

No. That implies that the fucktwit in the past could land a taildragger on grass.

I call bullshit on that revisionism.

talk the talk but very few can walk the walk

2015 Shoreham Hawker Hunter crash.



Can you say "Top Gate", boys and girls? I knew you could.

Fucktwits. They treat my vocation with contempt. They wreck irreplaceable
museum pieces and kill themselves and people on the ground. Yet somehow,
through the marvellous modern calculus of Political Correctness, they still manage
to have more virtue than I.

Fucktwits.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Whoring and flying, doesn't get much better than that, right Chuck!!!!

Ahhh, the good old days in the bush.

Remember the first time you saw a Twin Beaver Charlie?