How Much Does Flight Training Really Cost?

How Much Does Flight Training Really Cost?

Tired of flight schools telling you, “it depends” when you ask about flight training cost? Or perhaps your school gives you a quote and later charges you more than quoted? We get it. At The Flight School at Colorado Springs, there’s a lot we wish we understood about flight school pricing before we went to flight school. Though there’s no simple answer to “how much does flight training cost?” there are a few things you should know. Allow our mistakes, experience and bad times help you sort out the mess that is the price of flight training.

Flight Training Is Expensive

There’s no way around it: airplanes are expensive. So is aviation fuel, aircraft maintenance, insurance and hangar space. Some larger flight training programs charge upwards of $110,000 to help a student become a professional pilot. Most charge somewhere between $70,000 and $90,000, all told. The Flight School at Colorado Springs can help you accomplish your flight training for less than $50,000.

Prices, like the array of factors that influence them, vary widely. The type of school and how payment structures work influence the cost of flight training. So do ‘hidden’ or indirect costs such as the interest on financing. The price of gas for commuting to an airport, childcare and the financial consequence of taking time off work for training can all have an effect as well.

Pricing Transparency

Many programs’ prices only reflect the direct costs of flight training—aircraft rental and instruction. Unfortunately, this leaves out materials, testing fees, ground schools and more. As you’re asking schools about the cost of flight training, ensure you ask about the other costs you may incur. It’s a good idea to find out whether or not their financing programs will cover those costs, as well.

The Flight School at Colorado Springs includes many additional costs in its pricing because we believe in transparency. Our quotes, including those below, include all of the direct training, testing and study costs.

Part 61 & Part 141 Flight Schools

Two major types of flight training exist. The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) provides for two types of flight training operations: Part 61 schools and Part 141 schools.

A Part 61 operation receives less direct government approval and oversight. Independent CFIs, mom and pop flight schools and even some big-box schools are all Part 61 flight schools. These operations don’t have established, FAA-reviewed syllabi nor are they subject to specific maintenance requirements and management structures. Instructors at Part 61 schools may jump around on any given syllabus they wish to teach. They may also teach in the ways they feel are most appropriate or beneficial to the student.

Part 141 schools, on the other hand, require FAA oversight and approval to operate. These schools are subject to significantly more regulation. Part 141 schools must have organized structures, training plans and syllabi students must follow. Typically, these schools can mint new pilots and pilot ratings in fewer hours with more strict training plans. If you as a student do not demonstrate proficiency in a certain lesson, you cannot often proceed too much further into your training until you satisfactorily complete the lesson.

Which is more expensive? Part 61 or Part 141 Flight Training

There’s no easy answer to this and anyone who tells you otherwise shouldn’t be trusted. Many Part 141 schools charge more for instruction. Some may require your instruction be a part of a larger career-focused training program. Fewer Part 141 programs exist and many are associated with universities or schools. Enrollment in a degree program remains an important requirement. For these reasons, it’s typically—but not always—more affordable to attend a Part 61 program.

Is Part 61 or Part 141 Flight Training Better?

Whether a Part 61 school or a Part 141 program is better for you is a question only you can answer. Typically, those who do better with more structured training may do better in a Part 141 program. This isn’t always the case, however. Some Part 61 programs emphasize a rigid structure as well—including The Flight School at Colorado Springs. The cost and effort required to qualify to become a Part 141 program may be a deterrent for many excellent structured programs. Other schools may simply prefer the flexibility of a Part 61 program.

You can swap back and forth as you like. Many instructors believe it’s best to earn a Private Certificate with a Part 61 program, then switch to Part 141 for an Instrument Rating and back to Part 61 for Commercial and CFI Certification. Fewer Part 141 programs are set up to allow you to pick and choose. While there are certainly benefits to staying on “one side or the other,” those who have taught both types of programs often prefer Part 141 Instrument and Part 61 everything else.

Pre-Pay, Fixed-Cost, Pay-As-You-Go—What’s the Difference?

A handful of payment schemes offer different benefits and drawbacks when it comes to flight training. Some schools charge a fixed price on the training required for a rating. Others only offer rates on instruction and aircraft rental. Some do a combination of all of the above.

Fixed Price Flight Training

Big flight schools—like ATP or many university programs—have a fixed price. The last time we checked, ATP charges roughly $109,000 for its entire program. This comes with a few caveats, as many aspiring pilots have learned. For one, students report that you can only fail a test so many times before you’re out of the program. If you’re partway through a rating and you’re booted, have to quit or relocate, it’s unlikely you’ll get all or even any of your money back for that rating. The further you are through training, of course, the less money back you receive.

Pay-As-You-Go Flight Training

Many flight training programs charge you for the time you fly and the time you receive instruction. If you fly for 1.8 hours and receive 2.1 hours of instruction, you’ll be billed specific rates on the aircraft time and on the instructor’s time.

At The Flight School at Colorado Springs, for example, you may rent an aircraft at $165 per hour and hire one of our talented instructors to provide instruction at a rate of $50 per hour. If you book a two hour lesson with a flight instructor and the two of you fly for 1.5 hours, you’ll pay two hours for the flight instructor plus one and half hours for the aircraft.

Pre-Pay Package and Bulk Hour Package Training

Some flight schools, including The Flight School at Colorado Springs, offer discounts for pre-paid training packages. With a pre-pay package, you typically receive a discount for buying your hours in bulk. This can be as simple as a 5% discount on every $1,000 of credit you put on account at a flight school or as complex as a specific rate on certain aircraft while working toward a rating.

The Flight School at Colorado Springs offers many pre-pay package options. For example, our Private Pilot 60/60 deal offers 60 hours of aircraft rental and 60 hours of flight instruction for a lower overall price than the hours would cost otherwise. Any hours flown in excess of this while working toward the Private Rating are typically billed with a discount as a courtesy.

Pre-Pay packages are typically non refundable. This helps flight schools retain students but presents a risk to students who may want the flexibility of relocating for whatever reason. Regardless, the packages often save students at least a few hours of flight time and keep students motivated to finish.

Additional Costs of Flight Training

Though aircraft rental and instruction constitute the bulk of the money spent on flight training, a number of other costs can be directly associated with flight training. These costs include textbooks, materials, ground schools and equipment.

Ground Schools

Most flight instructors are interested in only one thing: flight time. Few instructors regard flight instructing as a career. Most only use it as a stepping stone on the way to airlines or, in some cases, as a retirement job or part-time weekend gig. To become an airline pilot, pilots need at least 1,500 hours of flight time, so CFIs working toward an airline job are in it for the hours and not typically the pay.

All this is to say that CFIs want to teach in the air and not on the ground. Though all students will certain require some ground instruction one-on-one with a CFI at some point in their training, it’s expensive to pay a CFI to teach you all of the required ground school material one-on-one. For that reason, online ground schools, virtual ground schools like those offered by The Flight School at Colorado Springs and other solutions exist to help you learn more affordably.

The Flight School at Colorado Springs retails access codes for online ground schools our instructors are familiar with that cost about $200-300 each depending on the course. Other online ground schools exist and many can help you with test prep software and other tools.

Textbooks and Materials

Though most flying texts are FAA-published and available for free online, many students prefer a paper copy, available from retailers like The Flight School at Colorado Springs or online. These texts typically cost $20 to $40 each and students will need between four and seven of them over the course of their training.

A plotter, E6B calculator and paper maps known as “Charts” are typically good buys as well and can be purchased for relatively inexpensive prices online or from The Flight School at Colorado Springs.

Equipment

Borrowing flight school ‘beater’ headsets isn’t often preferable to buying your own, since your mouth will often be quite close to the microphone and your ears covered with the same pads that cover everyone else’s ears. For sanitary concerns alone, many students purchase their own headsets. Used, these can be found on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for a few hundred dollars. New, fancy active-noise-canceling headsets (they’re worth it, trust us) can sell for as much as $1,500.

Some students elect to spend a couple of hundred dollars on their own handheld aviation radio that they might use in case of radio failure in the cockpit. Typically, this won’t be an absolute necessity until becoming a CFI, at which point you’ll want one to keep tabs on the students you send to solo.

Hidden Costs of Flight Training

Flight training doesn’t cost only what the school charges you for your training and the aircraft. Commuting to the airport, the time you take off work and the cost of childcare all weigh on flight training budgets, just as does the time you take between lessons and the added cost of conveniences like eating out with your peers to study.

We often recommend a “buffer” or “padding” be added to flight training budgets to account for the extra hour or two of flight time you may need to maintain proficiency while you wait for a checkout or the extra lesson you might need on a specific procedure.

Time

Time is money. We’ve all heard the saying and it holds especially true in flight training. At The Flight School at Colorado Springs, we offer accelerated training for this reason.

The more time that passes between lessons, the more you’re likely to forget what you learned in the lessons previous. This often means you’ll spend more time in each lesson reviewing the previous lesson than learning something new. For this reason, maintain your proficiency by training consistently and in an accelerated fashion. You’ll save a lot of money.

At The Flight School at Colorado Springs, we only train a few students at a time. This helps keep the schedule organized and allows our students to spend their time flying instead of vying for time on the schedule.

Gas

Driving to and from the airport often burns quite a bit of gas. Don’t forget to consider the cost of both gas and the time you spend commuting that you wouldn’t otherwise. If you live close to one airport and further from another, even if the training at one airport costs more, you might consider adding up the commuting costs and factoring those into your consideration, too.

Childcare

For those without kids to drop off, pick up and shuttle around, scheduling is much easier. But if you do have kids, you may have to pay for daycare or a babysitter when you’re out flying. Consider these costs when budgeting for your flight training—and remember that especially if you fly somewhere else, you’ll need a plan if your aircraft has any issues while away from home.

Convenience

Among the often least-considered factors in flight training costs is the convenience tax. When you’re tired after a long day of flying and learning, you probably won’t want to cook. So you’ll grab some food on the way home. If you live far from the airport and forget to pack a lunch or don’t have time to, it’s tempting (and often necessary) to just eat out.

Your group study sessions with fellow students may happen over lunch or at a brewery after you’ve finished flying for the day. If this happens often (it likely will) the cost of eating out and grabbing something from the store at the last minute may add up. In later stages of training, you’ll probably want to go places—that’s a convenience too—and the hotel, food, rideshare or shuttle costs can add up, as well. Consider the additional lifestyle costs that come with being a student of aviation when you budget for training.

Delays

“When you have time to spare, go by air.” It’s true: time seems to slow down when you’re trying to get somewhere in an airplane. Or when you’re trying to learn to fly airplanes. You’ll need to consider that your training aircraft will need an inspection right when you’re about to go to checkride. Worse, your CFI will get a “big-girl” job offer and move on, causing you to need to switch CFIs. Then you’ll have to convince a new CFI you’ve already learned all those cool tricks. At The Flight School at Colorado Springs, we don’t start students with CFIs who are close to departure. Instead, we match those instructors moving on with students who don’t need consistency—like commercial students, CFI candidates and time-builders.

Delays are so common in aviation, you should plan on them. Plan that flight training costs more than you think it will. You’ll be happier when you come in under budget.

Financing Costs

The cost to borrow money for flight training should be carefully considered. In 2024, interest rates are absurd—so much so that it may not be worth borrowing money for your training. It’s up to you to decide whether or not financing is right for you. Don’t forget to consider the cost of the money you have to borrow or otherwise obtain while planning for how much your training will cost.

Return On Investment

You might make cargo holds of money as an airline pilot (when you eventually get there) but life makes no guarantees. When I told my uncle, a legacy airline pilot, that I planned on becoming a pilot, airline hiring was booming. The first thing he told me was that I should ensure I had a backup plan.

My uncle’s advice has echoed throughout my career. Nearly every older airline pilot reminds me that even with a massive pilot shortage predicted—and even with record hiring—aviation remains a boom and bust business. As many say, airlines hire until they furlough and furlough until they hire.

Flight Training Cost Factors Outside Your Control

A stroke of a pen in Washington could completely change the requirements to become an airline pilot. This could flood the market with suddenly-qualified applicants. You might figure out you hate flying halfway through your training (unlikely, but sure, it’s possible). Much worse, injury or illness might take your medical away. Things happen and it’s best to be cognizant of that simple reality.

It’s Worth The Cost

But, on the other wing, if you didn’t take any risks you’d never get out of bed. Flying remains a valuable and fantastic experience. At the moment, it seems to be giving a lot of pilots a huge return on investment. But because things can change, you should plan on your goals taking a year or two longer than you think they will.