What A Beginner Flying Lesson Costs

The Five Prices And What Each One Covers

Five prices, one lesson length. Every one of them is two hours: thirty minutes of ground instruction, ten minutes of preflight with a checklist in your hand, about seventy minutes of flying, ten minutes of debrief. In the simulator the preflight becomes ten minutes of cockpit setup, and the seventy minutes are flown in the Redbird.

What The Extra Money Buys

$349 is the entry price. You get a hundred-horsepower Skycatcher with a Garmin G300 glass panel, or a hundred-and-sixty-horsepower Warrior with four seats and a low wing, whichever of the two is free that day.

The step to $449 is a hundred dollars and it buys a seat, not time. Same Warrior, same two hours, one guest in the back listening on the intercom.

$549 buys a different airplane rather than more of the same one. The Diamond DA20-C1 has a control stick where the two trainers have a yoke, a bubble canopy you can see out of in every direction, and 125 horsepower. It is lighter on the controls than either of them.

$749 is four hundred dollars above the entry price, and all of it is airplane. N422SN is a Cirrus SR22 Turbo: 310 turbocharged horsepower, a Perspective glass panel, a side-stick, 215 knots of cruise and a parachute for the whole airframe. The lesson taught in it is the same lesson.

$249 is the only price below the entry rung, and it buys the Redbird MCX, a full-motion simulator the FAA approves as an AATD. It does not cost less because it is shorter. An hour in the Redbird costs less than an hour in any airplane we fly, and the table below shows by how much.

Why The Lesson Costs Less Than The Hourly Rates

Because it is priced to start people flying rather than to bill for parts. Set against our pay-as-you-go retail rates, which are what you pay to rent by the hour with an instructor, the arithmetic looks like this.

The instructor figure is $110 an hour across the full two hours, which covers the ground half hour and the debrief as well as the flying. The aircraft figure is about seventy minutes at the retail rate. Our rates are wet, so fuel is already in them.

A second saving never shows up in a table like that. Rent by the hour and the aircraft clock starts when the engine does. A taxi down to the run-up area at Charlie behind three other airplanes is billed at $269 an hour while you sit there. The lesson price is flat.

The wait is ours.

Course packages carry their own, lower hourly rates. Those belong to the longer question of what a certificate costs, which is answered on the flight training cost page rather than here.

What Is In The Price And What Is Not

• The airplane or the simulator, and the fuel
• Your certified flight instructor for two hours, ground lesson and debrief included
• Headsets for everybody on board
• A signed logbook entry, dual instruction received

There is no tax and nothing added at the desk. No fuel surcharge, no headset rental, no booking fee, and no separate line for the ground half hour, which billed on its own would be ground instruction at $110 an hour.

What is not included is anything you bring yourself: a photo ID, sunglasses, and closed-toe shoes flat enough to feel the rudder pedals through. That is the whole list.

The Twenty-Four Hour Credit

Enroll in a course within twenty-four hours of your lesson and 100% of what you paid for it comes off the package price. The credit is the figure on your receipt, not a fixed allowance, so the $249 simulator lesson and the $749 Cirrus lesson are both credited in full.

Twenty-four hours is counted from the lesson, which in practice means the decision gets made in the debrief or that evening. We would rather write that plainly than have somebody find out on day three.

Past twenty-four hours, a lesson is a lesson, and the credit is gone.

How The Gift Card Is Priced

One gift card, five variants, the same five prices: $249, $349, $449, $549 and $749. You are buying a named lesson rather than a dollar amount, so nobody has to work out whether the balance stretches to the airplane they had in mind. The beginner flying lesson gift card is a separate product from our general flight gift cards.

It arrives by email as a code and has no expiry date. The person you give it to books their own slot, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, seven days a week.

Questions About What A Lesson Costs

Does The Guest On The $449 Lesson Pay Anything?

No. The $449 covers both of you in the Piper Warrior, one flying and one in the back on the intercom. The combined weight limit for the two of you is 360 lb, and the guest needs no license, medical or experience.

Am I Charged If The Weather Cancels?

No. The booking moves and the money stays where it is. A reschedule you ask for yourself is also free up to twenty-four hours before the lesson, and the $249 simulator lesson runs whatever the sky is doing.

What Happens To The Credit If I Enroll Three Days Later?

The 100% credit is tied to the twenty-four hours after your lesson. Enroll later and you pay the package price as published, though the lesson still counts as loggable dual instruction toward the forty hours in 14 CFR 61.109.

Do I Have To Buy Anything Before The Lesson?

No headset, no books, no kneeboard. We supply the headsets and the checklist. You do not need a medical certificate to fly with an instructor either; under 14 CFR 61.23 that comes before your first solo.

Is There A Weight Limit On Each Price?

Yes, and it follows the airplane. The $349 and $449 lessons take up to 180 lb per person in the Cessna 162 or the Warrior. The $549 DA20 and $749 Cirrus lessons take up to 200 lb for the person flying. The $249 simulator lesson has no limit.

Keep Reading

• What ongoing flight training costs in Los Angeles
• What a beginner flying lesson includes
• Flying for one day, with no course to join
• Choosing your airplane for a first lesson
• Flight gift cards for any amount