How do you keep your students if you charge them for a half day if, for example, you only work with them for a couple hours? Unless your rate for a half day is really cheap... care to tell us your rates?
You have to keep in mind what I'm working with. I don't normally work with your typical "student" that comes in for 2 hours and leaves. Nor am I working at a flight school where I'll see 3-4 guys a day.
My clients are typically owners or club members looking for a flight review, an IPC, maybe an insurance check (I have one client that comes to me every 6 months to satisfy the insurance man in his 310), possibly an instrument or multi-engine rating or high performance/altitude/complex endorsements. That kind of thing.
My typical client is big money and they normally know it and they aren't afraid to let you know it. So what happens a lot is they get calls on their cell phone or they show up without a nav log filled out (as assigned), etc. and they I found that charging for time hourly I was getting shafted. When I read the recommendation to start charging day or half day rates, I took it. Similar to what I do when I charge a client a day rate for contract pilot work...
For typical piston stuff, I charge $250/half day or $400/day.
Half day gets you 4 hours with me. If you spend 3:58 of our time on the cell phone, that isn't my fault and I'll see you tomorrow/next week/next month. I try to schedule 0800-1200 when I do a half day but sometimes the client's needs dictate otherwise. Normally I'll roll into the parking lot around 0745, take 10 minutes to get my stuff situated and I'm ready to rock and roll around 0755. Spend 30-45 minutes pre-briefing, then go fly for an hour or two, then come back and post-brief and assign some reading or a flight plan, etc. Bottom line is that if we agree on 0800, I'll be ready to go. If you don't show up until 0930, you just wasted 90 minutes of your time and $93.75. We agreed on 0800...you're paying me. Most of my time is on the half day plan. If they show up and decide they only want to spend 2 hours at the airport, that's fine...$250.
For a day, you get me for 9 hours including an hour for lunch. If the client chooses to join me for lunch, I don't mind answering questions or even going over some of the next flight we're going to go on. I like doing full day stuff for instrument students and multi-engine students. I tend to prefer half day sessions for private pilot and commercial pilot students (the commercial guys can practice the maneuvers a lot on their own once I get them going). Again, 30-45 minutes briefing, go fly, come back and post-brief, maybe do some ground work or hit some oral questions then another quick brief, go fly, come back and post-brief and assign the homework. It's a
really good system.
Benefits:
- I don't feel bad when someone shows up 2 hours late and I charge them anyway.
- I know it's worth my while to drive to which ever airport I'm meeting the client at. None of this 45 minute drives each way to bill 1.4 hours of instruction.
- Invoicing becomes easy. I have it set up to enter the day and half day rates. I type in the date and e-mail it off. I don't have to track 1.4 here and 1.2 there and 2.1 there...
- The client only makes the mistake once or twice of not reading/doing homework. If they don't do it, I don't mind...we just go over it together. If that means we just spent 4 hours reading, then doing an IFR flight plan/nav log, then you don't get to fly with me today...which means more lessons and more $ out of pocket. They quickly learn just to do the reading/assignment before they show up. Makes my job easier.
- When I have to fly with them to the examiner, I don't have to feel bad about charging them for being there. That is already included in the day rate.
For solos (not that I do many these days...I just don't care for primary instruction and I'm not all that great at it, IMO although some of my clients tell me otherwise), I endorse on the first solo flight and one of the limitations is that they have to have my verbal and/or written approval prior to subsequent solo flights. Normally if they're just going to burn some avgas in the pattern, I have them call me, I'll check the weather, have them tell me what
they know about the current/forecast situation and then give them approval and/or fax a written approval if I'm near a fax machine.
For solo cross country, I'm coming out to review your nav log/flight plan anyway, so normally I'll schedule a lesson (we'll go do something productive), then I'll cut them loose on the xc flight.
Works good. Last long time. I'm not about draining someone's wallet, but I'm a professional and I expect the client to participate in the learning process. If they don't, they'll either run out of funds or realize they're
going to run out of funds and start doing the work like they need to.
-mini