Our flight time-building program stacks up valuable hours for less.
Fly your way to 1500 or beyond for less than many new pilots pay for training.
Offering bulk discounts for time building is a core element of what we do at The Flight School at Meadow Lake. Our goal is to build better pilots by offering more accessible, more affordable flight training options. Among those options, we encourage pilots to pursue diverse training opportunities—such as flying only at night while going somewhere new on an IFR flight plan. This helps build more valuable, more diverse hours and experience while pilots ready themselves for a career in aviation.
Our bulk discounts range from 5% to 20%, with more restrictions on the type and time you can fly as your discount deepens. All pre-pay plans are nonrefundable and all prices already reflect the discounts we apply.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to give us a call! If you’re looking for similar advantages in your flight training, check out our accelerated flight training plan!
*50h Pre-Pay Agreement Rate in Single-Engine SLSA or Cessna 150 aircraft.
Time estimates based on time-building estimates of 120h/month and instructing at 80h/month. Actual results may vary.
For time-builders (and students) interested in visiting Colorado Springs to fly, The Flight School at Meadow Lake offers crash-pad style shared housing from $200 per week. Single rooms are also available for a higher cost when demand permits.
We are happy to pick you up from the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport if you arrive by commercial airliner—please give us a call well in advance to provide flight details.
Crew cars for use driving to and from the airport, grocery store or nearby restaurants are available for those staying with us for no additional cost.
If you’re interested in staying with The Flight School at Meadow Lake while training or time-building, please give us a call! We’d be happy to host you.
Building hours seems like an expensive proposition—and it certainly can be. But with the Flight School at Colorado Springs, building hours using flight-splitting and our bulk hour discounts, flight time building can be not just achievable, but affordable.
Especially for airline pilots, the sooner you begin the career you want, the more time you have to gain seniority and the sooner you achieve better pay.
The longer it takes you to build your hours to the ATP minimum of 1500, the less opportunity you have to make money later in life—especially since airline pilots must retire at age 65.
Some estimates suggest the investment in hour-building instead of working your way to 1500 hours can return hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career—and it makes sense if you think about it. Even just one extra year at an airline late in a career can net close to a half-million dollars!
The more diverse your flight time experience, the better your resume will look to any potential employer—airline or otherwise. That’s why we offer special packages devoted to the most valuable hours—night, IFR and cross-country. But it’s not just about the resume—the diversity of conditions you fly in also makes you a better pilot.
Freshly-certificated commercial pilots and flight instructors may be disappointed to find a major shortage of jobs they’re qualified for. Most entry-level flying jobs require a minimum of 500 hours of flight time for insurance purposes, but many, many more jobs—including all airline jobs—require 1500 hours or more.
Many low-hour pilots become flight instructors and teach their way to the 1500 hour mark. Unfortunately, this can take quite some time and doesn’t pay much. Many pilots wash out and find jobs in other industries before seeing the cockpit of an airliner or earning a job that can pay enough to make the training worth the financial return on investment.
The Flight School at Meadow Lake offers flight time-building, or renting aircraft and flying toward the goal of adding more experience to your logbook, more accessible and more affordable.
Investing in the experience required now in an expedited fashion can pay major dividends over the course of a career at a major airline—especially since you will be eligible much sooner than were you to flight instruct or take a low-paying, low-hour-requirement job. To this end, The Flight School at Meadow Lake offers bulk hour time-building packages to help pilots gain more-valuable experience, faster.
Climbing to 1500 hours logged is a steep and difficult journey. But at The Flight School at Meadow Lake, we’ve made it just about as affordable as it gets: while splitting time with another pilot (we’ll connect you) pilots can reduce the cost to as low as $55 per hour, per seat, wet (inclusive of fuel). This low cost means time-building from 250 to 1450 hours can be done for less than most schools charge for the cost of ratings in 250 hours.
Understanding the comprehensive cost of time-building can be annoying, so The Flight School at Meadow Lake put together a Flight Training Cost Calculator.
This calculator can help both those with no experience understand the full cost of training (all estimates include the cost of materials and testing fees) and assist those with some experience in how much their experience will reduce the cost of their time-building with The Flight School at Meadow Lake.
“Split time” refers to the time-logged when flying with another pilot.
A limited number of scenarios permit two pilots to log time while flying an aircraft. Only two generally apply to flying smaller aircraft.
The first is instructing: an instructor is the Pilot in Command of an aircraft, but a rated pilot may also log the PIC time when flying the aircraft.
The other, and more time-building-relevant scenario, permits two pilots without instructor credentials, to log time. One pilot flies the airplane—the pilot flying—and another acts as the safety pilot. The safety pilot only logs the PIC time when the pilot flying is simulating instrument flight or “under the hood” using a view-limiting device.
What exactly goes in each pilot’s logbook can be more complicated, but both pilots are typically able to log 95% or more of each two-leg flight.
“Split time” permits cost sharing, so while the aircraft is discounted to $110 per hour wet, for example, each pilot only pays $55, for their one of the two seats.
No, pilots do not need to provide time-building partners. The Flight School at Meadow Lake will connect pilots with each other and will both schedule pilots with other time-builders and provide a group chat and events to help time-builders meet others they’d like to fly with.
Yes! The Flight School at Meadow Lake does offer housing for time-builders and flight students on a weekly basis. Give us a call to discuss options. Weekly and monthly lodging options can make your time-building that much easier.
The Flight School at Meadow Lake recommends The Dead Reckoning Society for affordable multi-engine time-building. Housing with The Flight School at Meadow Lake is also available for those time-building with The Dead Reckoning Society.
