Aileron

While I was starting my research into flight training mid-2014, it was a rare and valuable find to come across a frank discussion of costs, so I'd like to post a clear and simple account of my expenses so far, near the 10 flight-hour mark, taxes and all.

The books cost includes only those that I think are necessary for training. I've bought a whole bunch of aviation related books that are more for entertainment than learning, and those are not included here.

I can't say how this would factor in, but N51 is in suburban New Jersey, within 15 minutes of two other airports with their own flight schools. Air traffic is fairly light, even on beautiful Saturdays, so there is not much time burned sitting on the taxiway waiting to use the runway.

The lesson fees include instructor time for ground school (the 10–20 minutes before and after each lesson when we brief/debrief the flight), but I haven't been logging how much time ground school takes exactly. I don't think it's a bad assumption that the proportion of ground school to flight time will stay the same up to the final exam, so we can assume my flight training operating costs will remain $140.14/hr moving forward, which includes aircraft rental, flight training, ground school, and fuel burned driving to and from the airport.

Assuming I am average and take 65 flight hours to get to a passing final exam, the remaining 54.2 hours will cost me $7595.59, resulting in a total PPL cost of $9341.88. The numbers are much larger and scarier here compared to when I just go in and pay $150 a pop, but that's the purpose of this exercise, and $9300 is what I'm looking at realistically. Most flight schools will advertise $6000 to get a PPL but that assumes your last name is Skywalker and you only take 40 hours to learn it. Most pilots will tell you a wide range, $6000–$12,000, which is more accurate but not very helpful in financial planning.

Whether it's a worthy objective to minimize the cost of a PPL, and consequently learn as quickly as possible, is questionable, and that certainly isn't my goal. It would be nice to finish earlier, and thereby have spent less money, but with the PPL in hand I would continue flying anyway which means burning cash at a comparable rate, so the savings are phantom. I really like the idea of learning the material completely.

It took me almost exactly four months to get 10.8 flight hours behind me (2.7 hrs/mon), which is much slower than the 8 hrs/mon that I'd originally anticipated. Hopefully I can increase this rate, but I don't think it's a huge deal if I can't. Extrapolating the current lesson rate, I will get to my final exam in 20 months (this number sounds dismal).

So there is the ten-hour financial report. I think it'd be good to check back in at 20 hours, 40 hours, and when I have my PPL in hand.