Not sure if this is right...

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SCAirborne

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SCAirborne
Second thread I started and unfortunately same common theme in asking for advice. I started beginning of August and have spent nearly $2k in lessons. My log book was filling up second page and I thought I was doing good. I then started to add up the totals page and noticed I have only 7.1 hours logged. The reason is that most of my flights have been between .5 and .7 hours. The rest of the time has been ground school. This basically equates to $282/per hour. Is this normal? We usually meet an hour before the flight for ground school and then I pre-flight check the plane and we're airborne between 15-25 minutes later leaving 1/2 hour to 45 minutes of actual flight. At this rate it will be in excess of $12k and 11 months to finish my PPL. Seems a bit long and expensive and wanted to know what anyone else has experienced? I know the rates will go down once I begin to solo and not have the "dual" rate I'm paying now, but just wanted to get people's opinion.

Thanks
 
that doesn't seem right.
Average price for a PPL is "Around" 8-10 grand

2k for 7 hours puts you at around 14k
Something's not right.
 
I paid $150 / hour to fly with instructor
$110/hr to fly solo
$25/Hr for ground instruction

^ those numbers are not too atypical
 
It's hard to make blanket statements but talk to your CFI about this and looking ahead. Usually when you start out you will do shorter lessons as anything more than an hour for most people is too much when starting. Once you start the cross-country portion, you'll be flying longer and longer in lessons and less ground time.

The main thing is do you like your instructor and is he training you or wasting your time? If you're being charged for 20 minutes each lesson for you to pre-flight while he grabs a sandwich, that's not good.
 
SCAirborne said:
Second thread I started and unfortunately same common theme in asking for advice. I started beginning of August and have spent nearly $2k in lessons. My log book was filling up second page and I thought I was doing good. I then started to add up the totals page and noticed I have only 7.1 hours logged. The reason is that most of my flights have been between .5 and .7 hours. The rest of the time has been ground school. This basically equates to $282/per hour. Is this normal? We usually meet an hour before the flight for ground school and then I pre-flight check the plane and we're airborne between 15-25 minutes later leaving 1/2 hour to 45 minutes of actual flight. At this rate it will be in excess of $12k and 11 months to finish my PPL. Seems a bit long and expensive and wanted to know what anyone else has experienced? I know the rates will go down once I begin to solo and not have the "dual" rate I'm paying now, but just wanted to get people's opinion.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Which plane are you training on?
 
That is not enough time to learn and practice a skill in a lesson. Get a real instructor, or find a different flight school. You are being milked.

Jim Hiatt
Com, CFI, II, MEI (since 1979)
 
I really like my instructor. Very knowledgeable and courteous. I've also met a lot of used car salesmen too that I would describe the same way haha. I started looking at my stash the other night that I put away for lessons (which is noticeably lighter) and also added up my log book and couldn't believe it. I know he charges like $45/hour for his time and then dual flying rate of $175ish/hour. So doing that math I guess I've paid approx $800 for ground school.
 
Are you at flight school? Ask for a statement so you can see all the charges laid out. When I did my private it was around $180/hour in a 172 (plane and instruction) a few years ago. $280 seems to be a little steep unless you're renting a Cirrus or similar. Try to make your flight lessons a little longer. 0.5 is way too short to accomplish anything worthwhile.
 
20 hours of ground and 7 hours of flight?

That sounds out of balance. I'd expect them to be about equal at such an early stage.

It does depend on what he's teaching. Is it an actual solo ground school, or is it a review of self study? Solo ground school is inefficient; a classroom would be much better. And the most I've seen charged for one of those is $200 plus materials. Self study can be efficient, if the student is sufficiently motivated. But it does depend on learning style.
 
Shop around. Ask specific questions. If you are saying the charges are $175 for the plane, plus another $45 for his instruction, then that's way high. Or does the $175 cover the plane and instruction?

You posts aren't very clear. It would help if you would break things down in more detail.
 
jordane93 said:
Try to make your flight lessons a little longer. 0.5 is way too short to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Click to expand...

Agree with the highlighted. Looking back in my logbook at my primary training flights, we averaged between 0.9 and 1.1 hrs of flight time.
 
You need more flying Time and less talking. You shouldn't be paying him whil you do the pr flight unless he's doing the walk around with you. An hour ground school before every lesson seems very high. Shop around the area,and ask questions since this I your first instructor,you really can't know how good or knowledgeable he is.
 
MAKG1 said:
20 hours of ground and 7 hours of flight?

That sounds out of balance. I'd expect them to be about equal at such an early stage.
Click to expand...

Agree. My flight school sells a student pilot package that bundles together 15 hours of airplane time and 23 hours of instructor time (which can be either fight or ground). The idea is that an average student might take roughly 15 hours of flight time and 8 hours of ground time before solo. 8 is way less than 20.

When I instruct, the first few lessons are biased toward ground time. After lesson 3 or so, it is biased toward flight time. Usually something like:
Lesson 1: 1.0 ground, 0.7 flight
Lesson 2: 1.0 ground, 0.8 flight
Lesson 3: 0.8 ground, 0.8 flight
Lesson 4: 0.5 ground, 1.0 flight
...and so on.

MAKG1 said:
It does depend on what he's teaching. Is it an actual solo ground school, or is it a review of self study? Solo ground school is inefficient; a classroom would be much better. And the most I've seen charged for one of those is $200 plus materials. Self study can be efficient, if the student is sufficiently motivated. But it does depend on learning style.
Click to expand...

Agree also--I make an effort to only teach topics that are relevant to the flight, and will help the student understand what will happen inside the airplane. For a presolo student, this includes aerodynamics, preflight inspection, traffic patterns, use of the radio, and briefings on maneuvers that will be performed. The student is responsible for choosing a method of studying for the knowledge test.
 
I did the classroom groundschool at a community college - I can't remember, but I think it was around $200 back then. That freed up my lessons for flights. Normally my CFI charges started when we met and stopped when we left - that's OK by me, I know a lot of CFIs charge based on Hobbs but I don't have a problem otherwise as long as the time spent together is lesson related. I think that probably led to about an extra .2 to .3 per flight for the CFI for the time spent discussing the upcoming flight lesson and talking for a few minutes afterward about it.

Most of my regular training flights were in the 1 hr range. Much more than that in early lessons led to saturation and headaches for me. Less than that and I felt like I didn't learn much other than how to taxi in a straight line.
 
Looking at my log spreadsheet the shortest logged flight before solo was 1.1 hours, and that was just before the CFI got out and turned me loose for three trips around the pattern. I had a couple flights that were logged as 2.5 hours each in there. At no time did I feel that I was overwhelmed or too tired to continue. Oh, and I was 48 at the time. Everyone is different.

Ground instruction was minimal as I recall, enough to cover what we were doing that day. Prep for the written was on my own (thank you John and Martha).

I would suggest that you talk to the CFI and/or flight school and see what the plan is.
 
At a towered airport in a 172/Warrior your lesson time can be eaten up a lot with taxi, avionics setup, waiting for other landing/departing traffic, and so on.

If you are training at a quiet non-towered airport in a sparsely equipped 150, then it doesn't take all that long to get underway for a lesson. Depending on how the lessons are structured, it might be possible to get one done in .5 to .7. But if that's the case, what's wrong with doing an hour and getting more done?
 
A subject dear to my heart. If, and that's a capital IF, the airport's small and uncontrolled, not busy and the practice area is in the immediate vicinity, you will have the most efficient learning by flying shorter lessons and contemplating them longer between lessons. You won't get much out of longer lessons. One or two tenths, sometimes three per lesson for ground. At a busier airport, with lots of taxi time and positioning to and from the practice area, it will take about 1.1 or 1.2 hours on average to get the same results.

dtuuri
 
Yeah, my 1.0 beginning lessons were probably only about 0.7 at most flying and my learning-to-land lessons which were at a nearby airport probably only had about 0.3-0.4 of landing practice in that time and it was enough, too! I was drained after a dozen landings.
 
Well I went to another close by Airport yesterday and found a recently retired Commercial Airlines guy who seemed great. I showed him my log book and he immediately confirmed what most of you said on the post. I've decided to give him a try next week. Wish me luck.Great advice and thank you all for commenting.
 
Yeah, that doesn't seem right, most of my lessons I had logged at least 1.0 of flight time. Total for my PPL was about 7k. If this doesn't sound like what your doing, you might want to ask your instructor, if still no progress, change flight schools to save money.
 
Use a syllabus, I used the AOPA one you can download as a roadmap to my training. I'm sitting at 41 hours, now just doing checkride prep and I've spent maybe $7k mostly flying a 172.
 
run these #'s by your instructor and be like "what's up wit dat, yo?" def doesn't sound quite right.
 
There's not enough information provided here to determine whether your instructor has a plan, and is taking a reasonable course of action, or whether he is fleecing you. Either is possible, and anyone in this thread that asserts one or the other is speaking out of turn.

Just because your training isn't structured like other people's training doesn't mean it's wrong or unreasonable. There's more than one way to train a pilot.
 
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Just an update.. not sure if this even shows anymore since the post is so old. I took on a new instructor and things are moving along much better. First flight with him today consisted of 30 minutes ground and 1.2 flying. Luckily I only had a week span of no flying in between lessons so most things clicked and very little "re-learning". Thanks again for all the advice. Hopefully I'll be asking some airplane purchasing advice in a few months!! Thanks again.
 
Sweet!

Sometimes taking a week off is a good way to recharge anyway.

Glad to hear you found a better fit!
 
SCAirborne said:
Second thread I started and unfortunately same common theme in asking for advice. I started beginning of August and have spent nearly $2k in lessons. My log book was filling up second page and I thought I was doing good. I then started to add up the totals page and noticed I have only 7.1 hours logged. The reason is that most of my flights have been between .5 and .7 hours. The rest of the time has been ground school. This basically equates to $282/per hour. Is this normal? We usually meet an hour before the flight for ground school and then I pre-flight check the plane and we're airborne between 15-25 minutes later leaving 1/2 hour to 45 minutes of actual flight. At this rate it will be in excess of $12k and 11 months to finish my PPL. Seems a bit long and expensive and wanted to know what anyone else has experienced? I know the rates will go down once I begin to solo and not have the "dual" rate I'm paying now, but just wanted to get people's opinion.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Are you flying a Cirrus 22 or a Cessna 310? If so, then yes, that would be normal. If you are in a 172 or 152, you are getting hosed. Besides which, .5-.7 is too short for a good lesson.
 
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