Learning to fly isn’t exactly cheap. Although no national figures exist, it’s a safe guess that most of us will spend between $10,000 and $15,000 to earn a private pilot certificate. That hefty price tag would seem more than enough for the school to earn some amount of profit, but sadly that’s not always the case.
Making money in flight training—or any airplane-related business for that matter—is all about asset utilization. Airplanes cost money whether they are flying or not, but they only make money when the Hobbs meter is running. The same goes for flight instructors, who often are treated as assets. It’s standard practice for a school to take a percentage of the instructor fee—ranging from $5 an hour to around half of the total fee. So, if the instructor isn’t teaching, he or she isn’t bringing in revenue for the school. This system makes it easy for schools to budget, bill, and determine the number of assets needed, but it isn’t always what’s best for the student. I think it’s part of what’s driving students to quit flight training.
In AOPA’s research into the ideal flight training experience, current and former students, flight instructors, and flight school owners said that value was a critical factor in the successful outcome of someone’s flight training program. Many people are quick to say that learning to fly (and aviation in general) is too expensive, and only when we bring costs down will we attract more people.
Yes, I think some people do run out of money and quit flight training, but overall the cost argument is a red herring. It ignores the reality that people will figure out a way to pay for things they really value. Think kids cleaning airplanes for flight time and you get the idea.
Ultimately value is an equation with cost on one side and perceived gain on the other. Only when the cost exceeds the perceived gain do people start questioning their flight training investment. And a big part of that is the pay-per-hour model.
When a prospective student walks into a flight school and asks how much the training will cost, the answer has to be “it depends.” The school can give the minimum cost with some certainty, but it always comes with the disclaimer that almost everyone pays more. But how much more? And at what point does the student feel like he is being fleeced?
A flat-rate flight training course is the best way around the problem. But the reason that model is virtually non-existent in the flight training world is that, while it would be best for the customer, it would be suicide for the school. The answer is simulation. Simulators have low fixed and variable costs, so it doesn’t cost the school to allow students to use them as much as they want. This premise is the basis of the Redbird Skyport flight school in San Marcos, Texas, which is experimenting with this model, and many other facets of flight training. We profile the school and its founder, Jerry Gregoire, this month in “Big Idea,” which begins on page 22.
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