Youtuber Fatal Crash
- Thread starter FlyingAccountant
- Start date
🦈💜
Well-Known Member
Expensive checkrides are bad for aviation and make it only for the rich. The DPEs abusing their monopoly are the ones taking advantage of pilots.
🦈💜
Well-Known Member
You think normal people are dropping more than $20k on their PPLs? Holy crap.
$130 for the airplane and $65 for the instructor where I instruct, in the bay area.
I know there are some scammy schools out there charging $$$$$$ but if you're basing your pricing on that, you're screwing the students just as hard as they are.
I'm lucky if I make $800 in the left seat of a jet flying passengers for 14+ hours of work on a schedule I don't choose or want. If you're keeping track, that's <$580 after taxes. Plus I have a ton of expenses, expensive food, uniforms and equipment I can't write off. And that's year 10 CA pay.
You think instructors are making more than $600/day after taxes? Man, I don't know what planet your figures are from, 'cause it ain't this one. Pretty much every single one of my FOs comes from being an instructor and that doesn't even remotely resemble their experiences.
🦈💜
Well-Known Member
Or to reply in kind: "This might be the dumbest take I have ever heard."
Inverted
mmmmmm wine
Well, it just sounds like your perspective is off. I could work a 5 hour min credit day trip and make more than that after taxes. 65 hours for instruction is probably the lowest in the Bay Area. Cirrus instructors at Jato are all over 100/hr for instruction. Regardless of what anyone can make doing some other form of work, the responsibility warrants the price. You can not like it, and complain about it, but it is what it is.
I charge 100/hr for instruction and I am on the low end. You can charge 65 all you want, I charged that in 2009.
Inverted
mmmmmm wine
BTW, in the numbers you gave, just in flight time and instruction with the rates you gave, it would be 11,700 dollars for 60 hours of flight time and dual instruction. That is not including tax, fuel surcharges, ground school, ground instruction, knowledge test, supplies, etc., so forgive me if I am not seeing the big red flag with checkride costs.
Karnage
I-am-a-pirate. I do not need credentials!
Local flight school quotes $14,296.00, that's 40 hour dual, 12 hour solo, 25 hours ground, a flight kit and bag, plus "additional materials" for their PPL program. Unless someone's coming in 5 days a week that 40 hours dual isn't much of a guarantee (never was when I was instructing and people flew one or twice a week) and their cheapest combo is $147/72 hour for plane and instructor. A $20k PPL here sounds fairly reasonable. Looking at a few SF Bay area schools they quote close to and north of $20k so that's not an unreasonable idea. Whether it's right or wrong, can't say, but is what it is (and probably easily justifiable based on insurance rates alone).
I haven't instructed on the side since I left OO four years ago, but even then I was charging between $100/hr and $200/hr for instruction depending on what it was I was doing. I generally would discount ground and could go as low as $50/hr for a few things (like drone sign offs) but at no time was I ever the cheapest around. But then again, I wasn't a wet ink on my certificate instructor either. While the idea of doing DPE work has been tempting I've really just decided if I ever wanted back into that world I'd just instruct.
I haven't instructed on the side since I left OO four years ago, but even then I was charging between $100/hr and $200/hr for instruction depending on what it was I was doing. I generally would discount ground and could go as low as $50/hr for a few things (like drone sign offs) but at no time was I ever the cheapest around. But then again, I wasn't a wet ink on my certificate instructor either. While the idea of doing DPE work has been tempting I've really just decided if I ever wanted back into that world I'd just instruct.
knot4u
Repeat Offender
I miss Todd, he would
I took my PPL checkride with a DPE way back in the olden times and I don't recall the cost being the final hurdle. I understand you comparing what you make as a DPE to what you might make flying 121, but when I went for my ride it wasn't about the money from my perspective. I have no idea what it cost my DPE to conduct the oral and practical tests but I think I only paid him a couple of hundred dollars. I'd never met this person and I have no idea of his relationship with my CFI but he never pulled a punch, my PPL checkride was not smooth as glass. If your sole reason for doing it is monetary perhaps you're doing it for the wrong reasons. There's a shortage of young folks trying to enter aviation as a career and you're just another impediment rather than an advocate. A rising tide raises all ships.
DropTank
Well-Known Member
I will assume you will not.
And I appreciate that.
I will not undercut my fellow pilot
Contracting, DPE, or any other way
In my eyes, it's the same as crossing a picket line.
I've seen people walk up to Primaries and offer their services for cheap.
Both the Primary and myself blacklisted that person for LIFE.
We do tolerate actions like that.
DropTank
Well-Known Member
Pleas advise your DPE of this opinion
Suppose certain FSDO's let that crap go.
That doesn't fly in other areas.
Word getting around that you stomp a guy for extra $$$ and you're losing your CLOA (Certificate and Letter Of Authority) in short order.
And that's a one way trip and Resume Generating Event
The amount of notes that accompanies a failure is unreal.
Some even publish a full flight graph of each checkride in event of a audit.
Inverted
mmmmmm wine
I am for sure not doing DPE stuff for the money. I charge average to below average. I do see the common trope that DPEs are somehow gouging and abusing the world of aviation with what they charge. I just simply don't understand that argument.
True. Of course, the one thing seemingly missing from all the various FSDOs in regards to one another, is the S in their acronym.
DropTank
Well-Known Member
A cost list was completed by the other dude, so I will not repeat it.
And if you think PPL is expensive, you should see Multi and Instrument.
Jet specific 61.58's in the aircraft are a bit more pricey.
Around $5k for the smaller ones.
Then there's $1000000 / for airline pilots.
Guess I should undercut them now too huh?
NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
DropTank
Well-Known Member
Wet, even.
Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
2003-2004
Cherokee Cruiser (hence name) PA-28-140 = $55/hr
Instructor = $20
Total for 1 hr dual = $75.
Too lazy to see what that is in today’s dollars.
Torrance pricing for plane rentals and flight training is just insane.
Cherokee Cruiser (hence name) PA-28-140 = $55/hr
Instructor = $20
Total for 1 hr dual = $75.
Too lazy to see what that is in today’s dollars.
Torrance pricing for plane rentals and flight training is just insane.
Karnage
I-am-a-pirate. I do not need credentials!
I got a lot of “why should I pay you a few grand to ferry my $700k+ plane across country for me when I can go to the flight school and get some schmuck to do it for free and all I gotta do is pay for gas” back when I ferried planes as a side gig.
Yeah, sure I guess. Just hope your insurance covers that guy when he forgets to set he brake and rams it into a hangar one day cause I know that kid from the flight school doesn’t have any. (Not sure of the details but after I got turned down by a guy wanting his Baron ferried from Ohio to Arizona he called a few months later wanting me to pick it up from someplace in the Midwest where it had been getting repaired after it got damaged by the guy he picked to ferry it the first time and the story had something to do with hitting a hangar.)