How Much Should Pratical Tests Cost?

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This is much debated at the national level.

In Michigan, we are currently charging $350.00 for most checkrides (private, instrument, commercial, etc) and $500.00 for CFI checkrides.

For most examiners, a practical test takes roughly 5 hours from start of paperwork to heading home (imagine maybe 30 minutes of travel also to and from) so a total of 6 hours to do the test.  If the examiner plans another hour of preparation and paperwork after they get home, this means a practical test takes 7 hours of examiner work time.

In our case in Michigan, this means we are getting $50.00 per hour.  This seems a bit low.  Many flight schools are billing at least this for instructors, and if we go with the logic than an examiner is more experienced and highly qualified than the average instructor, we should be making more per hour.  If we thought $75.00 per hour was adequate, it means we should charge $525.00 for a checkride.  This feels high also.

Should cost of living be taken in to account?  If we used the cost of living calculator by CNN (http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/), and charged $500.00 in Las Vegas, we would have to charge $912.00 in New York or $572.00 in Chicago based on cost of living calculations.

Thoughts from everyone?

The State of the Flight Training Industry

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This week we heard President Obama discuss the State of the Union. This got me thinking about the state of the flight training industry, so I decided to take a stab at my own version of a “State of the Industry” address. As I write these words, I can’t help but think, “Who am I to tell the flight training industry about itself?” I’ll be honest, there are others who are probably also qualified to make similar statements, but I feel okay doing this since I work in this industry every day, talking broadly with flight training providers who are individual instructors, from local FBOs and all the way up to collegiate/university and academy training environments. I see the broad path of this industry and I am concerned. Continue reading →

What’s in a Tail Number?

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N7801U – that’s the first plane I ever flew. It was a Cessna 150.  I soloed in it too.  I didn’t get my private pilot certificate in it, that was in N13527, a Cessna 172.  I also did my instrument training in N13527.  They were both owned by the same instructor who trained me.  I flew both of these planes a lot in my first few years of being a pilot.  Both of them became a part of my personal pilot history.  I’ll remember those tail numbers for as long as I fly. Continue reading →

Just How Useful is VFR Flight?

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As an instructor and pilot examiner, many times when I train or test private pilots, they ask me if they need to get an instrument rating to really be able to fly for travel.  I started thinking about the question some the other day and got curious.  So I looked at my own flight time.  I was surprised at what I saw.  With over 4300 hours, I found that only 12% of my time was “instrument” (including simulated time).  If I looked at actual instrument time, it was about 9%.  Let’s put this in perspective, 46% of my total flight time was cross-country flight, time when you would think most pilots might encounter actual instrument conditions, on flights when a pilot needs to travel and get somewhere for meetings, vacations, etc.  When I looked even deeper, I found that only 16% of that cross-country flight time has been logged under actual IFR conditions. Continue reading →