What's a reasonable budget for IFR certification?

easik

easik

Pre-takeoff checklist
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easik
I have a PPL with a little over 140 hours. I just moved to a new city in GA and I'll like to get my IFR rating done sometime this year. For you IFR certified pilots, how much did it cost you in time and money? thanks.
 
It cost me about the same amount of money and time to get my instrument as it did to get my private.

Then, once you get it you have to use it. To me, that’s proving to be somewhat difficult. Need to force myself to fly IFR, and do approaches more often.
 
Same as Ralph above, about the same time as PPL, money a bit more due to inflation. You're going to need 40 hrs. of flight training, some of which can be done in a sim or FTD. Cost wise it really depends on your situation, i.e. do you own, rent, belong to a club, do you have a CFII buddy, etc.
 
Depends how much flying you need to do. If you have all your simulated instrument time and cross country time done and you are a proficient fast learner then you can do it on a small-ish budget $6K-$8K, at least around here, for both plane rental and instruction, etc.

If you need to still get your 40 hrs of simulated instrument then that's going to add at least $4K, just for the rental alone
 
I paid about $4000 for the instructor from PIC (plus incidentals, had to put him up in a local motel for four days). The rest was fuel and incidentals out of my pocket for for 26 hours of flight time in my aircraft. Add to that $450 for the DPE and a few hundred to Mr. Jeppesen for charts to cover the week.
 
easik said:
I have a PPL with a little over 140 hours. I just moved to a new city in GA and I'll like to get my IFR rating done sometime this year. For you IFR certified pilots, how much did it cost you in time and money? thanks.
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Time and money wise, like the others said, figure it's like getting your PPL again.

Also don't try to rush it, and utilize sims and IMC, can't stress that one enough.
 
I am also in Georgia. I have my own plane so I don't know about rental costs, but my CFII charges $50 an hour for my instrument lessons.
 
Depends where you are with your X/C PIC and simulated time. Do you have access to a school with a certified flight sim? That can save a bit.

I think I spent around 6k on mine.
 
Kind of a guess, but i would recommend budgeting about $8,000. It may be less, but then you will have come in under budget! :)
 
MickYoumans said:
I am also in Georgia. I have my own plane so I don't know about rental costs, but my CFII charges $50 an hour for my instrument lessons.
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Awesome, wish I had my own aircraft to continue training. To my surprise, rental cost and instructor cost here (at PDK) is higher than in California where I did my PPL training.
 
Thank you all for your response. noted.
 
You need 50 hours of cross country PIC. If you already have that done that will be a cost cutter for sure. Do the written before you start training (I wish I had). That way your time spent with the Hobbs running is shooting approaches and less time learning the knowledge type stuff

My 2 cents.
 
Do not start training by doing approaches. First learn to fly the plane precisely..After that skill is in the bag, approaches become a minor navigation exercise. My best instuctor, the one that got me passed on the checkride, spent hours flying in the practice area. Climb, descend, turn while holding precise speeds, altitudes. Boring and frustrating? Sure, absolutely. Hated it, but essential.
 
Yeah, my IFR CFI had a random approach to training that was not really conducive to learning to fly in the IFR system. Very first time up we flew an approach. Wow, that was great, what's an approach?
 
TRocket said:
You need 50 hours of cross country PIC. If you already have that done that will be a cost cutter for sure. Do the written before you start training (I wish I had). That way your time spent with the Hobbs running is shooting approaches and less time learning the knowledge type stuff

My 2 cents.
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I've always gotten my written out of the way for any rating. That way I can concentrate fully on flying.
 
BrianNC said:
I've always gotten my written out of the way for any rating. That way I can concentrate fully on flying.
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My problem is I took the Instrument written three times and let it expire before I got around to doing the flying part in earnest.
 
2 grand if you have the hour requirements. 6-8grand if you don't.
If you have 25hrs hoodtime and 50 xc then do 10 hours in a ATD do your ifr XC then spend 2 hours doing local approaches you'd use on checkride. IFR flying is 95% mental so assuming you can maintain control of the airplane under the hood it shouldn't take too much practice to pass the checkride. Now will you be good at IFR as far as working in the system, or in actual.. maybe not. But it gets your rating fast.Then for followup you can just drag a CFI up on a day for actual and go to lunch somewhere.
 
flyingron said:
My problem is I took the Instrument written three times and let it expire before I got around to doing the flying part in earnest.
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I've done that on every rating myself. Private, instrument, and now commercial. No telling how many times I took the private because I would quit flying for awhile. Just took my commercial written again last year (I've done it at least once before) in June and the clock is ticking. lol.
 
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