Is learning to fly hard?

[jedi]

It's almost $180 an hour to fly in a small single enging plane learning my private certificate!! Hardly affordable.

You should be able to find something less expensive than $180 per hour. Look around for the less well known sources. Clubs, shared ownership and free lance CFIs. I expect the $180 includes $40 for dual of which the CFI gets $10. There are many individuals with airplanes that need to be flown more. Individual insurance will generally allow the owner to list 3 additional pilots. There may be an incremental increase in insurance cost since you are a low time pilot and the owner likely has more more hours and may get a lower rate. Renter's insurance is another way to go.

Unless you are in the New Your/ Washington DC area I think there should be aircraft and instructors available for $140 or less. Let us know what you find. Go to the smaller and friendlier airports. They need the business.

[Eddie King]

I'm a Student pilot 82 yrs young and going for a Sport License. wanted to fly all my life but coudn't afford the cost. but have saved up a few dollars and going for it. I joined the father john flying club at Dalton airport at Flushing MI. I'm flying a Taylorcraft BC12 that meets the lite sport rules. It costs 36 dollars an hour Tach time that ends up less than Hobs time plus fuel with a 60 cent a gallon discount for being in the club and chapter 77 EAA. my instructer is charging me $25 an hour. the Taylorcraft burns about 4 1/2 gallons an hour, So my cost is around $75 an hour +or- a few bucks. we allso have a Cherokee 140.
Right now the club is looking for a few more members.

[jedi]

I'm a Student pilot 82 yrs young and ...... I joined the father john flying club at Dalton airport at Flushing MI.... flying a Taylorcraft BC12 that ..... cost .... $75 an hour +or- a few bucks. ...Right now the club is looking for a few more members.

Congratulations Eddie. I have fond memories of Dalton from the 60s. I impressed my future and present wife by flying in to have dinner at the Squire restaurant which was located right across the street north of runway 18/36. I still like to tell the story of watching a P51 depart overhead from the sod on r/w36. Watching P51s from a ¼ mile away at OSH operate from 10,000 feet of 200 foot wide r/w does not hold a candle to operations from a 1,800 foot (if I remember right) grass strip with wires. Also got a ride in a Ryan PT - 22 from that airport. It was the same PT-22 that was later purchased by Buck Hilbert. Dalton is one of the great survival stories of GA thanks to a lot of dedicated individuals.

[martymayes]

Way to go Eddie. Too bad Flushing is 2+ hrs away for me.

[jedi]

Way to go Eddie. Too bad Flushing is 2+ hrs away for me.

Clarklake is a great place to fly with many nice airports in the area, at least it used to have nice airports. Within 10 miles or so was the Al Meyres aircraft factory as well as the Maule factory. You are also within 60 miles of many other historic aircraft facilities. Stinson and Ford factories, the first paved runway in the US, the first airport hotel and the first radio beacon airway in the US goes overhead, Detroit to Chicago.

What is it like now?

[martymayes]

Clarklake is a great place.....
What is it like now?

It is a great place...The Meyers-Diver airport is still in operation, not much activity outside of Skydive Tecumseh. There's still an old building with some tooling from the Al Meyers days and a handful of guys that develop heavy aircraft mods. Not much left of the Maule facilities at Napoleon. The airport owner had B.D. Maule's old house on the corner demolished a few yrs back. Reasonable amount of local/transient traffic, all things considered.

[Bill Greenwood]

What kind of plane and where are you that you have to pay $180/hr for a lesson?
That sounds high, even for one of those places at tower airports where the CFIs wear ties, and call you Mr.

Here in Boulder, a Diamond wet, with CFI is $180. When they get a 172 they expect it to be $140 and when they had a 152 it was $110.

Yes, flying someone else's airplane, with CFI, is expensive. But there are so many less fun, to me anyway, things to do like play golf that cost over a $100 per day. Skiing is about the only over $100 thing that I know that is as much fun or more so than flying, and you often have to travel a long ways to ski, with the expense of getting there. Being able to fly somewhere to ski is a great combo.

You can minimize the total costs of getting pilot license by studying and being very prepared for each flight lesson. One poster on here said it took him 85 hours to get a sport pilot license. I admire his persistence in sticking with it, but in the long run he paid over twice what it cost me to get mine in 43 hours (not counting inflation of course).

The computer courses or DVD or CD rom courses are at most about $299, so less than the cost of 2 flight lessons, and many libraries even have older courses in book forms for free, which are certainly adequate, or a local pilot who had finished his course may sell or give you his CD when he is finished.

[Buzz]

You can minimize the total costs of getting pilot license by studying and being very prepared for each flight lesson. One poster on here said it took him 85 hours to get a sport pilot license. I admire his persistence in sticking with it, but in the long run he paid over twice what it cost me to get mine in 43 hours (not counting inflation of course).

re:preparation. Bill is dead-on. I earned a Private License at 16 [took the test 2 wks after my 17th] in 53 hours. I had been in a GA cockpit 2x before that, so no other instruction.

I borrowed a neighbor's self-study Jepp ground school course and worked on that immediately. I took the Written very early into my flight training, which gave me a very good theoretical base to work from in each lesson.

I was also motivated to use every flight hour [including the solos] effectively. [I was making $1.25 an hour cutting laws and an hour of dual cost me $21.56.] I think that helped.

I also flew every Saturday. I started in October and got the license in June. No breaks.

I think it also depends on the quality of your instructor. Mine had been a pilot in WWII and been instructing on the weekends since. I think he had over 25,000 hours, mostly instructing.

I also flew at a unicom field [had 2 paved runways], so there was not a lot of flight time wasted transitioning out to the training/practice area.

Those are the factors I think resulted in finishing the Private in 133% of the FAAs required minimum hours at that age. A lot of reducing training hours is understanding what factors subtly contribute to increasing the # of hours one requires.

-Buzz

[If I were taking lessons again today and wanted to do the Private in even less time, I would have done practice sessions in my head between lessons to cut down my hours required with the instructor or in the air. I would imagine doing all the steps I had learned up until then. [the walk around, start-up, taxing out, climbing out, turning, etc.] I'd get a copy of the aircraft checklists and go through them imagining me doing the activity. Do I remember the steps and the numbers [climbout, over the fence.] Everything I forget between a lesson the instructor has to reinstruct me on the next lesson. If I use what I have learned in my head between lessons, I won't waste time having the instructor refresh my memory the next lesson. Any layoff between lessons adds to the total instructional time. ]

[jedi]

Bill Greenwood ask "Is learning to fly hard?"

It is time someone answered this Question. No, it is not hard to learn to fly but it does take considerable time and money!!! I do not know anyone that cannot fly the plane on the first lesson. Learning to land takes a little longer but it is not difficult. Difficult is something that no matter how hard you try it cannot be done repeatedly. Something like a hole in one. The pilots I know are able to land every time they fly and most do it successfully each time.
More importantly, not only is it easy, it is enjoyable and fun!!

[malexander]

To me, learning to golf would be harder than learning to fly. Not to mention, less convienient. Since I live on an airpark, with my hangar & airplane 20' from the my house, it's easier and less work than going to the lake, and cheaper!!