Juliet Hotel
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You're the exception not the rule IME.
charging dual rates for solo flights?
- Thread starter exncsurfer
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genna
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You are possibly correct. But I submit that, short of people going for the carrier, PPL students are often convinced to take the plunge by ability to rent after they get the license. Sure, once they actually get the license they often quickly realize that renting is complicated and give up(or buy). However, without that carrot they may never even get to be pilots at all.
I think the most fair way of accomplishing it all is to have CFIs as hourly employees, paid buy the school(for all the time they are working) without any direct relationship to student charges. Plane is rented at its rate, CFI is "rented" at his/her rate. Hobbs is used for both. The CFI overhead is baked into CFI rates just as administration overhead is baked into plane rates. This is fair for renters, CFIs, and very easy and clear for students.
Any school that has operated for a little while can figure out what the overhead is and price their rates accordingly
Juliet Hotel
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Building the CFI compensation into all rental rates in no way removes the ability to rent after the license is obtained.
genna
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yes, but it's immediately obvious that it's significantly more expensive. Flying at $160/h vs $210/h(after PPL) would make quite a lot of people think twice if the whole thing is worth it.
Juliet Hotel
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Who said the CFI would get paid $50/hr?
genna
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CFI's rate around where i am is $60-90/hour. What CFI get paid is irrelevant to my argument. What renters pay is. Even if difference(vs just plane rate) is not 50 but say 40.. you will get a lot less renters and then the burden has to be shouldered more and more by students(raising the CFI surcharge). Essentially bringing us back to "dual" price for student all the time. My point is that the school will lose renters and potential students intending to rent after PPL.
Juliet Hotel
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Well since we're talking about restructuring the business model, I think what the CFI gets paid is entirely relevant. And I doubt very many on-staff CFI's are getting $60/hr in their pocket. If they are, I'll start working on a CFI cert tomorrow.
The point is, I bet lots of FBO's could do this by increasing the rates not more than $20-25/hr. A $25/hr increase will no doubt reduce utilization some but probably not by a whole lot.
genna
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I just looked at my school's schedule to see how this would work out. Sunday has 33h in plane schedules and 15 hours in instructor scheduled. Assuming that all show up and instructors will bill(handshake to handshake) 12 hours @60/h.. That's $720 revenue. Now assuming that 33h scheduled produces 17 hours Hobbs. That means that plane's rate has to increase by $42 to produce the same $720 in revenue. That's a 25% rate increase on 172. I'd say this is significant.
In reality, the instructor rate here is more than $60 on average since they charge much higher rate for CFII and Multi( I cannot tell what type of instruction is scheduled)
MauleSkinner
Touchdown! Greaser!
Why don’t you buy an FBO and let us know how that pricing structure works for you?
DClevenger
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With this philosophy my company should pay me to come to work also after showering and driving to and from work. Really? I don't think so.
Supervised solo is one thing. I would never pay you to come to work as a business owner I know this for a fact. I do however pay you to be there when I require you to be there.
alfadog
Final Approach
I don't have to tell you that minimums are quite common. You call the plumber out, he has a minimum. If I work on someone's airplane at a remote airport, not only do I charge a bit more, I have a 4-Hour minimum. Or they can pay my travel time. If a flight instructor has to come in just to supervise your solo, then I think a minimum is appropriate. If that flight instructor can't be with another student because he's on the ground while you're soloing and that's something that's required, then he should be paid for that.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Today Mr Business Owner CFI you have a student doing a solo flight XC. The travel time to and from your home is 40 minutes, the time to review his planning and weather will take about 30 minutes. You charge $40 an hour as a CFI. Under your business model you should get paid $20 for an hour of your time minus gas and mileage on your vehicle.
You must be one dumb business owner and you are not going to get a CFI dumb enough to work for $15 to do this.
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Ignoring the pointless insults that only make you look bad rather than him, most professionals spend time and money when “off the clock” in order to provide the services they get paid for. In almost no professional position will you get paid to drive to work.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Yes they do, but not on every customer as some here suggest. My point is don’t expect an employee to do what you won’t do yourself. Most CFIs are not earning enough to give away freebies and to expect they do this as some duty to the student is nuts.
The scenario you describe would be rare. It would almost never happen. To have a student at the stage where they require 30 minutes of on site review of a plan and then have no other students for the day. Very rare. Do you never allow your students to solo without a 30 minute in person review of their flight plan first? That would be onerous and ridiculously control freakish, as well as ripping off the student and robbing their growth in learning to be more and more responsible.
alfadog
Final Approach
Isn't the usual pre-solo briefing something along the lines of "OK, drop me off and go do two t&g's and a full stop. I will be listening on the handheld. Best of luck and see you soon!"
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
What hardly ever happens, happens to me quite regularly. To day as a matter of fact. The student is a 18 year old struggling to get career started. I am going to drive on for free because I don’t need the money and I want to help the young man out. But I am not doing that for a normal person, especially a business owner. They are paying enough for my time and travel or they can wait until I am with airport with another student.
Feel free to fire me.
Just because it happened today doesn’t mean it’s not rare. Yeah, if you have a student that’s not getting it and stuck where you can’t let him solo without you reviewing his plan in person, then I’d expect him to deal with your schedule and wait for you to have other reasons to be in.
But, I still say it would be rare to have a student stuck at the stage where you couldn’t approve his solo with a phone call and discussion of his flight over the phone. If a flight instructor is expecting a half hour in person review for every solo through all training, then I say he is fleecing the student. That is not necessary. Once the student has shown they can do proper planning, a phone call is plenty.
RussR
Final Approach
You don't say specifically whether this is a local solo flight or a XC solo flight, but either way I also don't understand why this requires a trip to the airport for you. Wouldn't a phone call, text message, pictures of the flight plan, etc., be sufficient?
It depends on the rules you are teaching under, 141 requires the instructor to be at the airport that the student starts the solo from.
141.79(b) No student pilot may be authorized to start a solo practice flight from an airport until the flight has been approved by a certificated flight instructor or commercial pilot with a lighter-than-air rating who is present at that airport.
If you were teaching in a 141 school, odds are your employer would expect you there anyway, because there’s a bunch of other students, right?
His scenario of having to drive in for one student doesn’t seem to fit a 141 situation.
When I was teaching at a 141 there were times that one of my students needed to get a cross country done on a day that I was scheduled to be off. Students that worked full time and usually flew in the afternoon sometimes had a hard time getting good weather for a cross country because of afternoon thunderstorms. A weekend morning was often there best chance to get good weather to complete the flight. More than once I drove an hour each way to sign off a student for their flight and turned around and drove home as soon as they took off.
Did your employer compensate you for that time? How was the student billed?
My employer only compensated me for time that I charged to a student. If the student was prepared when I got there I charged 30 minutes of ground. If their flight planning wasn’t complete and I had to wait while they finished preps for the flight then I charged them for however long I was at the airport until they were ready to take off.
Sounds fair to me.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
[
Because the FAA doesn’t recognize a text as an adequate review of XC planning and as an XC logbook endorsement.
Because the FAA doesn’t recognize a text as an adequate review of XC planning and as an XC logbook endorsement.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Employers do not compensate CFIs, the students do. If the CFI does not charge the student, the CFI does not get paid for the time. Simple as that.
That’s a silly, incorrect, overarching statement.
When I used a school I never paid a CFI, I paid the school. When I hired a part 61 instructor directly, I paid the cfi.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
That may be, but the CFIs at 99% of the flight schools are not on salary. They are paid for the time charged the student, just like the Part 61 CFI you hired.
The school provides insurance, workers comp, and pays the employers % payroll taxes by charging the student more than the CFI hourly wage.
There are very few flight schools outside the university setting that can pay 10 CFIs to sit around when weather is below training minimums, it is too windy or there is connective activity. You don’t work, you don’t get paid.
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Let me get out my violin.
All of that may be true. All of that may suck. CFI work is not for everyone and you might have to look around to find a school that can keep you busy.
That’s still no reason to overcharge a student.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Just because you want inexpensive instruction does not require me to work for free. Hate to break this to you, if you fail to cancel more than 2 hours before a lesson, you get charged one hour instruction. School rule, not mine.
If you can’t afford flight training, take up motorcycles.
RussR
Final Approach
I think you're picturing a text saying "Ok you're good to go", but that's not what I mean. It's easy to send pics of flight logs back and forth using text messaging or email, or if using an EFB, sharing the actual files. Then have a phone conversation to answer any questions or discuss any issues. Then you can easily send an endorsement via either electronic logbook, or even a picture of a properly filled out endorsement.
There are several options other than physically driving to the airport.
I’ve got no problem with that policy either. I have a problem with charging dual rates for a solo flight.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
If you are a independent CFI, you can do that. When you are an employee, you follow the schools policies. When you are at a 141 school you follow FAA policies, which require a CFI be present (supervised solo) to release the flight.
Under supervised solo, the student Does not just show up and fly because it is nice out today.
If you don’t like the policies, go elsewhere. .
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Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Ok, take you business elsewhere. Like most businesses, the students don’t make the policies.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Gladly!
There are a plethora of CFIs around here that are fair.
And while you are looking for another flight school, understand you are squeaking over being charged for 5 hours of solo cross-country time;
At $40 an hour you are walking over an expense = to 2-5% of your training expenses.
You will soon find there not a plethora of CFIs out there today.
I have 3 I’m very close with already and I’m training to be one as well. Thanks for your concern.
Robbery is robbery and I’ll walk away from those robbing me no matter how small.
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
I doubt I’ll work for a flight school because it won’t be my primary income. But I have zero doubt I will give a lot of free ground school because I love talking aviation and helping myself and others be better at it. Even my worst instructors spent time discussing stuff while off the clock.