Civilian Ratings That Military Pilots Should Care About, Part 2

Welcome back to BogiDope! Last week we looked at the civilian pilot ratings that a military pilot may need to know about. This week we’re going to discuss some things to consider when choosing a flight school, look at a few specific flight school options, and talk about ways to get your ratings without breaking the bank.

Table of Contents

1. Big-Picture Flight School Considerations
2. Private Pilot Training Costs
3. ATP Training Costs
4. Review of Some Options
5. How Do I Fund All This?
6. Conclusion

Big-Picture Flight School Considerations

Last week we discussed two general categories of flight schools: Part 61 and Part 141. We’ll get back to these formalized classifications shortly, but let’s start with some straightforward considerations.

First, if at all possible, I strongly recommend at least taking a tour, in person, of a flight school before you sign up. Most places will also offer a half-hour introductory flight. Paying for those 30 minutes of flying is an important part of you evaluating that company as your flight training provider.

Next: Aircraft

You absolutely want a school with safe aircraft. I’ve seen some flying organizations that don’t take good care of their equipment, and I refuse to have anything to do with them. If you’re just starting out, it will be difficult to know whether a flight school is keeping up with maintenance; however, there are a few giveaways that should be obvious to anyone who’s ever owned a car.

As your tour guide or instructor is showing you around their aircraft, pay close attention to overall cleanliness. Don’t get too worried about fading or peeling paint on an older aircraft, but if it just looks dingy you’re not off to a good start. Watch for a layer of grime and dust all over the aircraft indicating that it spends lots of time sitting outdoors and doesn’t get washed. Look for smashed bugs on the windscreen and the leading (front) edge of the wing. If the plane has already been flying that day, it will have some bugs. However, it shouldn’t be completely plastered with dead carcasses.

A good flight school will at least wipe down the wings and clean the windscreen at the end of each day. They should wash their planes frequently enough to prevent significant grime from building up. Ideally, a school should have hangar space for most of its aircraft. A plane that lives its life on a ramp all day and all night is just going to have more maintenance issues than one that lives in a hangar. If the school isn’t taking care of simple cleaning, then it’s probably skimping on other maintenance tasks.

When you take a look at the inside of the aircraft, check for general cleanliness too. Scraps of paper, wrappers, and crumbs are easy to vacuum. Also, look for little stickers with the word “INOP” (inoperative) written on instruments in the panel. It’s legal to put off repairs by doing this, and it’s okay to see a couple of these here or there. However, if an airplane (or a fleet) has several of these stickers, it could be a sign that they don’t have the budget or willingness to carry out necessary maintenance. I’d rather see holes in the instrument panel where they actually took the time to remove failed equipment, than a bunch of INOP stickers meaning they have a habit of kicking the can down the road.

As with any car, you should also look for general wear and tear inside and out. Seats in training aircraft get a lot of use and won’t be pristine, but they shouldn’t be completely falling apart. Are there sun visors? If so, are they intact, or cracked and flopping all over the place? Do you see any obvious rust or corrosion anywhere on the aircraft? Does the windscreen look cracked or cloudy, a sign of plexiglass overdue for replacement?

Also, look around the ramp and in their maintenance hangar. Don’t be alarmed to see aircraft with an engine or propeller removed. That could be a good sign that they’re busy flying. Watch for flat tires or aircraft that look like they’ve been stuck in the corner and forgotten. If a flight school can’t afford to at least keep its aircraft on the flight line, they may have trouble affording other maintenance as well.

It’d be nice to always see fleets of shiny, new aircraft at flight schools. Unfortunately, new airplanes are outrageously expensive these days. You can find schools with fleets like that, but you’re going to pay a premium to help them make their loan payments. There’s nothing wrong with a school that flies older, slightly-less-shiny aircraft as long as they’re clean and safe.

Assuming you feel okay about the aircraft you see, the next most important part of training is the people with whom you’ll be flying.

Instructors

Flight instructing is not easy work that pays poorly. Don’t be surprised if the instructors you meet on your visit seem young and a bit tired or worn-out. Don’t expect them to be overwhelmingly exuberant every moment, but don’t put up with a bad attitude. If you notice an instructor constantly complaining...about the job, the company, or the industry in general...just run away. You may just be able to go with a different instructor at the same school, but if they all have bad attitudes, just go somewhere else.

Having taught flying for 17 years, I cannot emphasize how important it is to maintain continuity in your training. This means you fly with the same instructor all the time, and that you go flying at least a couple of times each week. (It’s not too much to fly 4-5 days a week if you can afford it.)

One of the most frustrating problems in flight training is when your instructor gets a new job and disappears on short notice. It will cost you time and money to start training with a new instructor. You need to talk to the instructor you get paired with and talk about his or her background, current experience, and plans for the future. An instructor with just a few hundred hours is probably stuck instructing long enough for you to finish your training. If your instructor is very close to earning an ATP, he or she may already have applications in at some regional airlines or corporate flight organizations. If you’re worried that an instructor will move on soon, you’ll need to make sure you fly as often as possible to get done before he or she leaves, or just go with someone else.

It’d be nice to have an instructor with thousands of hours of experience, but that probably just won’t happen. Thankfully, I don’t think having a relatively inexperienced instructor is a problem. The US Air Force staffs part of its UPT Instructor Pilot (IP) cadre with First Assignment Instructor Pilots, or “FAIPs.” They complete UPT, go directly to IP school, and come back to start teaching UPT with a grand total of about 300 hours to their names...and they do a great job. The USAF makes this happen by giving them lots of supervision and limiting the lessons and conditions under which they teach until they get more experience.

Civilian flight schools tend to do the same thing. A brand-new CFI will probably start by teaching basic lessons for Private Pilot candidates. They’re familiar with the aircraft and they only fly in decent weather. In fact, they’ve just been through so much training themselves that they’re probably more familiar with the maneuvers you need to learn than a high-time CFI who is just getting back into teaching after years of military or other professional flying.

Continuity is good for instructors too. A full-time CFI who teaches the same thing every day will be very familiar with how to instruct the maneuvers and will know the common student errors you’re likely to make.

When I did my ATP, I had upwards of 4,500 total flight hours. My CFI had a total of 450. I probably could have spent a decade teaching him things about aviation and not run out, but he did a great job because he was familiar and current on the specific training that I was getting.

Although it’s nice to have a CFI who works a lot, watch out for complacency as well. It’s easy to get burned out teaching the same thing every day. Watch for instructors who seem distracted or disengaged. When (not if) you screw things up, does your CFI recite the same instructions over and over again, or does he or she take the time to observe what you’re doing and tailor fixes to your specific performance? It’s okay to have a frank discussion about this with your CFI after a flight. Sometimes, just addressing this issue is enough. Sometimes, it might prompt the CFI to take a couple of days off to recharge. Worst case, you may decide that you want to move on to a different person.

The Flight School as a Company

Another place to look for signs of a quality organization is paying attention to how the flight school handles itself as a business.

Don’t expect fancy facilities, but they should at least be clean and clear of clutter. If they have a secretary, he or she should be courteous, fluent in aviation terminology, and very familiar with company policy and procedures. If the secretary can’t answer basic questions, it’s a problem.

Smaller flight schools may not need or be able to afford a full-time administrative person. In that case, does the other staff return phone calls and emails in a timely and professional manner? There is nothing more frustrating than a flight school that doesn’t answer messages.

They should have systems set up for billing. They should be able to tell you how much they think things are going to cost, and give you a detailed breakdown of charges for each flight, or each phase of training. There are a lot of great apps these days that make scheduling, payments, and other record-keeping very easy for flight schools. Don’t expect a smaller organization to use one of these apps, but I’d hope that this is almost universal by now.

Does Size Matter?

Flight schools come in all sizes - from a single aircraft with a single instructor, to nationwide franchises with numerous locations and hundreds of aircraft. Each has benefits and drawbacks.

On the low end, a single-aircraft operation can be nice. If you and the instructor get along well, you’ll benefit from personalized attention. He or she probably has more time to devote to each customer and will be very flexible on scheduling. He or she will be motivated to take care of the aircraft because all of the company’s eggs are in that one basket. (A flight school like this almost certainly falls under Part 61.)

However, the danger is that every time the airplane gets grounded for maintenance you have to sit around and wait. Sadly, it’s not uncommon for bigger repairs to take weeks to fix. The same goes for the instructor. If he or she gets sick or takes a vacation, you’re stuck waiting. This will always cost you money in the long-run. When an inexperienced pilot sits around not flying, his or her skills immediately start to atrophy. You need to fly a bare minimum of 1-2 times per week if you want to succeed in your training at any semblance of a reasonable cost.

For these reasons, I recommend choosing a flight school with at least two aircraft, if not more. Ideally, those aircraft should be as similar as possible to each other. This will allow you to train in several similar aircraft, or at least make a quick transition if your assigned aircraft gets grounded. Ideally, you’ll stick with the same instructor for all of your training, but it’s always nice to have more than one instructor available. You’re better off spending an hour or two getting used to a new CFI than sitting around for weeks not flying.

The benefits of having a larger fleet and more instructors scale up, but only to a point. The larger a flight school gets, the more likely you will just be another faceless customer to them. It’ll be a constant struggle to get the levels of customer service from a large school as you should expect from a smaller organization. Having more aircraft and staff means this company has higher costs. (There are a lot of administrative requirements for a Part 141 flight school.) You will probably pay more for your training at a large school than you would at a smaller operation. I recommend only going with a large, big-name flight school if you plan to do all of your training at once.

Perhaps the ultimate example of a large flight school is an aviation university. Typically, these programs include flying in addition to a 4-year degree program. If you haven’t done college yet, these have some benefits. However, take a look at overall costs and make sure you can get a degree that gives you somewhat marketable skills. You may be passionate about aviation right now, but if your degree is so specific that it has the words “Aviation” at the start of it, you may be limiting your options if you need to find non-flying work in the future.

Timeframe Considerations

We’ve already mentioned it, but the timeframe is very important to your successful and economic completion of flight training. You need to plan to fly at least 1-2 times per week. Ideally, you should plan to fly even more often. If you can’t afford this yet, get a second job and put all the money into a flight training fund. Don’t start if you can’t afford to continue!

It’s possible to earn a Private Pilot’s License while working or going to school full-time. It will take at least a few months, but it’s doable. If you can afford to fly almost every day, and the weather cooperates, you could feasibly complete a PPL in 4-6 weeks. Many schools offer accelerated programs for this type of student. If you can afford to train like this, I highly recommend it.

For an experienced pilot trying to add on an ATP, you should plan on a full week to complete the ATP-CTP program. These are almost always set, scheduled programs. You’ll need to take leave/vacation from work to get it done. For a current and experienced pilot, the flying portion of the ATP can be very quick. I did two days of training with a check ride on the third day. If you don’t have much multi-engine time, or you have been out of flying for a while, expect to spend some extra days logging extra hours to prepare for your ATP exam.

Now that we’ve looked at some of the big-picture considerations, let’s estimate some real-world costs. We’re going to project what it’ll take to earn the ratings we’ve discussed at a smaller-time, Part 61 flight school. Then, we’ll compare those costs to the more packaged deals you’ll see at some larger, frequently Part 141 schools.

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Private Pilot Training Costs

Although the regulations allow you to earn a PPL with just 40 total flight hours, it frequently takes upwards of 50-55 hours for many students. We’re going to look at estimates for both ends of that spectrum.

Aircraft and instructor hourly rates vary significantly by geography and other factors. We’re going to assume $130 per hour wet (meaning the price includes fuel) for a training aircraft, and $40 per hour for an instructor. Of the 40 hours you need, 15 will be solo.

We’re going to assume that you also pay $40 per hour for ground instruction, though the amount of ground instruction you get billed for will vary as well. (Don’t be turned off if they do charge you for this. It’s time your instructor spends covering important things with you...time that he or she could be flying and building hours.)

Here’s what your costs will look like with a minimum of 40 flight hours:

Item	Unit Cost	Amount Required	Total Cost
Aircraft Rental	$130	40 hours	$5,200
Flight Instructor	$40	40 hours	$1,600
Medical Exam	$100	1	$100
Check Ride Fee	$500	1	$500
Other materials (Headset, study materials, iPad or charts, etc.)	$1,000	1	$1,000
Total			$8,400

If you end up needing more hours, it could look like this:

Item	Unit Cost	Amount Required	Total Cost
Aircraft Rental	$130	55 hours	$7,150
Flight Instructor	$40	45 hours	$1,800
Medical Exam	$100	1	$100
Check Ride Fee	$500	1	$500
Other materials (Headset, study materials, iPad or charts, etc.)	$1,000	1	$1,000
Total			$10,550

This is a big investment; hence the lengthy articles aimed at helping you start on the right foot. Although it isn’t necessary to complete this training in order to apply for a UPT slot at a Guard or Reserve unit, most competitive applicants do.  I highly recommend you try to find a way to fund this training before you apply. We’ll discuss more on how to do that later.

Last week we discussed some “extra credit” flight training you could do to make a Guard/Reserve UPT slot application look even better. We won’t explore those in great detail here because there are just too many options. They start at just a few hundred dollars for a complex or high-performance checkout to several thousand dollars for additional ratings. If you have the means to pursue these options they’re fun, and they’ll make you a better overall pilot. However, you should not incur debt for these types of things. If you can’t afford them, wait until later.

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ATP Training Costs

It's tough to find a la carte pricing for ATP training because most places prefer to price everything as a package deal. It’s also difficult to find multi-engine training aircraft because they’re very expensive to keep up. The following represents an ideal situation for an ATP rating for a very current and experienced pilot. I present it mostly for the sake of comparison later.