This was the last airplane I flew, on my CFI course - the Piper Arrow.
A new year starts... and a new goal achieved: Mr. Sechterr Flight Instructor !
I was officially hired by my school to work as a full time Flight Instructor, finally!!
After 11 months of training and long days/weeks of waiting, cancellations, bad weather, grounded airplanes, checkride waits and the list goes on...
This blog was about flight training, the way up from Private Pilot to the Flight Instructor job at the least. If anyone is interested on Numbers, 11 months was a nice average in my school, from the beginning of instrument rating until actually starting to work as an instructor. If I consider the NET time, it would be 7 months. The extra 4 months were for sure spent on stupid waiting times between courses (at least one week) and before stage checks and FAA checkrides (at least one week for every FAA checkride - initial instructor certificate took 3 and a half weeks of waiting!!).
Costs of flight training in the United States: depending on the school, costs may vary. If it is a part 61 or 141, there is a big difference on the price. What I could tell you that right now, the fuel prices are very high and as of mid 2008, the flight schools in Florida are charging around $50/hour for instructor time, and around $200/hour for instruction flight on a C172SP. So if you do the math, solo time would be around $150/hour. Of course if you shop around, you could find schools with more or less 30% price difference - and it will usually be related to the facilities of the school and the aircraft it uses. There are schools that operate aircraft like the Cirrus with Glass cockpits for more expensive prices, there are other that operate really old c152's for a cheaper price - so the choice is yours only. If you are into a budget, a typical budget of anywhere between 50k-60K $ will take you from no flight experience to a CFI/CFII, of course that this does NOT include living expenses and reallocation/visas expenses. Still with all the difficulties lately with the local economy, the United States is still the cheapest place in the world for flight training, POINT. If you try Europe for example, the price would be 3 times this, no kidding. And of course the US has the best infra-structure for flight training in the whole world.
If you have already around 150 flight hours or more with a Private Pilot Certificate, I would recommend you to go for part 61 courses. It's faster and cheaper, but the requirements for a commercial certificate are at least 250 hours of total flight time. So you need around extra 40-50 for instrument, extra 15-20 for Multi-Engine (if you want) and more 40-50 for commercial.
If you have less than 100 hours total time with your Private Certificate, no doubt part 141 would be the best choice for Instrument Rating and Commercial Certificate. If you want some multi-hours, I would strongly recommend to do the Multi-Private then the Multi-Commercial all part 141 courses, It worth the extra bucks. On part 141, you can be a commercial pilot with only
120 flight hours!! The courses are longer and boring, structured, you have to follow each and every lesson in the order, have to pass stage checks and so on, so technically the courses are more expensive. But looking at the big picture, you don't need to buy any "building solo hours/share flights" - so it will eventually be cheaper. And usually, 141 courses have better quality than 61 courses, they are more supervised and more rigorous.
Bullshit apart, Daytona is a boring city. Hell, so boring! If you wanna have any REAL fun, you must drive down to Orlando at least, it's a 1-hour drive from here. If I could go back, i think I would try to find a school in California :))
Thanks for all my readers, I guess that's about it. I'm not sure about the blog, now I'm starting to work so I probably won't have much time to update things here. Maybe it would be a good a idea to start another blog, of the life as a flight instructor, on the way up for the hours required to a jet job. What do you say? I'll give a think about it, and hope you all enjoyed from the information considering flight training on this blog.
Go for your dreams!
Only you can make it happen.
Wish you all a healthy, safe, joyful and successful year!
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