Would you have decided to own a plane if you were to do it again?

What was your rental and instructor cost? I spent 38k for my commercial at a 141 university in FL.

How come so much dual time for instrument?

These types of graphs are always painful. But, yes, neat to see the breakdown!

Step 1.) call a local flight school and set up a discovery flight. If you enjoyed it proceed to step 2

Step 2.) ask the instructor what it takes to become a pilot

Look at zero to hero programs from flying schools, they are roughly 60.000$ if you can afford that. Then also you need to pass a level 1 medical. And study a lot.

Look at zero to hero programs from flying schools, they are roughly 60.000$ if you can afford that. Then also you need to pass a level 1 medical. And study a lot.

here is some advice from a student pilot who is about to get their privates. it takes a lot of money, my flight instructor is $50000 in debt and that’s considered good. it’s definitely a lot of hard work.. tons learning, memorizing, studying, and flying. i’m currently at 55 hours and a rough average (from everyone i have asked) that it takes to get your privates license is 65-80 hours or so. next step is a instrument rating, commercial license, a multi engine rating, and then you can go to cfi. my flight instructor had about 300 once she actually became a flight instructor (it took her roughly 2 years to go from privates-cfi). in all honesty making flying a career is a 5-10 year game plan but it’s definitely worth it.

Some correction on your data Salaries scale with experience. Captains on A320 in private airlines of Pakistan are earning upwards of 3 million a month.

However, it's not easy to get into airlines without simulator training. No private airline will bear that cost (PIA is losing money already and has over employed already.)

That said if you can spend the money, there's definitely a very lucrative career path. You can get your money back in 5 years. Which is nothing in grand scheme of things.

the salary is disappointingly low, ranging from 4 to 7 lakhs

To become a doctor from Private college in Pakistan, it can cost from 1 to 1.5 crore Rs, and pay is 40-60k Rs afterwards.

What do you think guys, should i tell this fun fact to OP or just let it remain concealed.

I want to become pilot

You do realize that a salary of 4-700k is an upper middle class salary in Pakistan. I don’t think more than 2.5% of Pakistanis make that much.

I’m a commercial pilot in the US, may I ask where else do you have citizenship? It may be beneficial for study abroad and avoid working for a Pakistani carrier all together.

Additionally purchasing a plane to help complete your rating and selling the plane afterwards is a great strategy but be cognizant of what aircraft configurations required for particular ratings.

US example: you can do a PPL and IPL in an older Cessna but cannot complete the CPL because the aircraft is not “complex” or a TAA (technologically advanced aircraft)

Best of luck, it’s an incredible career and I consider it a cheat code for life.

$0.

GI Bill at Part 141 community college paid for all of it, 0 hours through MEI. Think I had 60 hours or so at private.

$8000 at a mom n pop school in an old 172 back in 2020

30k.

I promised myself I would never do the math

About 20k. (Within +/- $200)

This includes all accessories, medical, ground school, iPad, etc.

Also includes moving states in the middle of training so having to buy more flight time to learn new airport and local area.

California to Arizona. (I’m AZ native so don’t hate me)

Hours: 97 (about 8 months)

Between $12-$15k and they don't expire so long as you have your biennial flight review, surrender it, have a disqualifying medical event or get it taken away.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is $60 - just sayin'.

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That's a joke - I have an intro flight scheduled, and this is very helpful. It's all under a year timeline though?!

23k now! Wow it has gotten expensive. I remember when you could do it for 8k.

At first I was thinking “not as bad as I thought” but I completely missed the “plane rental” on top. Good grief that’s an expensive thing to do.

Data was sourced using a combination of my emailed receipts from the flight school and tracked expenses. I used SankeyMatic to create the visualization.

Context:

I started my PPL journey April 23rd, 2021. I work full-time, so I was only able to attend part-time, usually over the weekend. Here is my total expenses. Breakdown of individual costs below:

Plane Rental (Wet, club member): 135/hr Instructor: 55/hr Total hours logged after my checkride 89.3

I thought it would be useful to share this information, given how common this question comes up in the aviation community. The FAA minimal requirement for a private pilot license is 40 hours of flight time, but few people ever complete it that quickly. I was initially signed off to complete my check-ride around the 65 hours mark, but due to delays (5 reschedules), I was not able to take the ride until 3 months after my originally scheduled date. This meant that I needed to keep flying, and stay fresh which substantially added to the cost.

$137/hr wet is a nice thing about "Rural Midwest Part 61" for sure.

I agree, but it was pre-tabbed before I knew any better. I bought it and thought it would help, when only it made things worse in a way where I didn’t have to look for things myself. I did most of my study out of the 2023 until I needed a current one for my ride, so I got a cheap one and found what I needed to know myself. The far-aim is a daunting book for beginners and it helped me narrow down what was important and what wasn’t, I think it was worth it in the end as a study aid.

Good to know. My kid (10) wants to get a ppl as his dream and I plan on socking away about 20k

Whatever we don’t use for the ppl can go towards flying club dues/buy in/fees to rent a plane to maintain proficiency

We are also going to take advantage of a free 2 yr training program offered by Boces for 11th and 12th graders, which consists of preparing for the written faa exam, ground school and flight sim training

Thank you, it means a lot. I was ready by 41, but the sheer number of reschedules resulted in several “one last refresher” flights for it to be cancelled. This also includes a 2.0 to the ride, a 1.3 on the ride itself, and 1.5 on the way back.

You did well

It depends on what your flight school charges per hour and how many hours you fly. Simple math. Give your local flight school a call for pricing.

It’s really tough to estimate a monthly basis cost. I’ll try and break it down, you can expect to pay 250-350 per lesson depending on plane/fuel prices etc. then do the math from there depending on how often a month you’re flying.

The more you stretch out the process, the more you'll pay overall. It's sort of like taking out a mortgage for a longer term, lower monthly payments in exchange for a larger bill.

I would highly encourage you to try shrinking that to 6 months or less. Training on just private material for a whole year is going to get boring anyway.

Keep in mind after you get your license you’re going to want to fly the plane yourself to fun places which costs $$$ too

Just do it as fast as possible to save money. No need to stretch it out.