How to Save Money During Flight Training

As a Certified Flight Instructor, I am often faced with students with a big dream to fly, but not as much financial backing as they would like. Trying to help students cut costs during flight training without cutting corners is a big challenge, but there are a few tips to help.

When you decide to begin flight training, you may only have one choice for a flight school in your area. However, some larger metro areas will have multiple flight schools in the area. If you have multiple flight schools in your area, call around and ask for their aircraft rates. Don’t be talked in to their brand new airplane with the latest technology.

Cessna 172

You can get your license for about 1/2 the price per hour by flying their older Cessna 152 instead of the new Cessna 172 with the G1000. Once you get further into your flight training, or after you get your license, you can easily get checked out in the Cessna 172 within a couple hours.

Cessna 152

Many flight schools will offer “block” discounts or other packages. For example, if you buy 10 hours upfront, they will often give you a discount. Sometimes they will have different packages with different discounts depending on how much money you put down. Obviously, not everyone can front the money, but if you can, it can save a little money.

Another way to save money, as simple as it sounds, is do as much studying at home as possible. You wouldn’t believe how little some of my students would study, and it would end up costing them a lot in extra ground school. Before an instructor can sign you off as prepared for a check-ride, they must make sure you understand the material. This means hours and hours of extra ground school, at a typical rate of $40 per hour. If you ask your instructor what your next lesson is covering (if he or she doesn’t tell you), you can go home and go over the requirements of the maneuvers and the relevant information related to that lesson. So for example, if your next lesson covers stalls, you can read up on how to perform stalls, look at videos of people performing stalls, understand what types of flight conditions a stall typically occurs during, different types of stalls, etc. This will help tremendously, because you will be VERY prepared for your lesson. Instead of learning about the maneuver, you are just learning how to perform the maneuver.

Another option, which many people don’t think about is to buy an airplane that you could use for training. When I was starting my flight training, I looked around at the cost of used airplanes. I found a used 1961 Piper Colt for sale for $14,000. I used it to build a lot of time (700 hours) and it only burned 5 gph. Four years later and a new radio and transponder, and I sold the airplane for $16,000. Not too shabby!

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