How many hours do you currently have?

Student pilots and people who want to become pilots need to be weary of flight schools and perform some due diligence before attending.

Many years ago flight training models shifted from creating good solid aviators to the business of education, and may schools took on a predatory approach where students are fresh meat to be chewed up until their accounts run dry and training is stretched out as long as financially possible.

Generally speaking, you shouldn’t be in flight school and a flight school shouldn’t accept you unless you can fly 2-3 times a week (wx permitting). This will be a much more efficient model to learn, cultivate, and retain skills and information. Flying once a week is not a reliable recipe for growth or success. It just wastes your money but the predatory school will love you.

Additionally, you should be finishing your private certificate in 40-60 hours. You should be soloing around 10 hours +/- . Anything more than something is wrong.

Quite often, schools make up loads of excuses about how your private certificate will take 80-150 hours. They’re dragging out solos as long as possible. It should be criminal for it to take this long. If a school is telling people it will take this long to earn their certificate the they are being predatory and just trying to maximize their profit per student. Schools and CFIs started doing this maybe 20 or so years ago but it has gotten exponentially worse when venture capital started getting involved in flight training, and it spread like a disease from there.

Generally speaking, your private certificate should cost you around $10k +/- depending on your area and fuel costs. 40-60 hours should take a few months at best. You should be able to knock out your private pilot in part of a summer depending on your location.

It may be worth considering saving up $10k-15k and find an old school, small airport in the country, with a professional CFI that is middle-aged or better, even retired, who teaches people because they’re passionate about aviation and cultivating the next generation of aviators.

Be cautious about the CFIs, particularly newly minted young kid CFIs, who are simply using you as their ticket to 1500 hours so they can move on to the next step of their aviation career.

Right now we see a lot of predatory behavior among flight schools and CFIs because you’re their ticket to better profits and the next stage, and they want every possible dollar they can get out of you.

I’d strongly encourage you to interview your CFI like you’re hiring a contractor or an employee— because that’s exactly what they are. You’re hiring them to perform a service. You want to hire someone that will help you achieve your goals as safely, thoroughly, and cost-effectively as possible. Ask about their teaching style, their philosophy on flight training and time building, and their organization and prep for each lesson. If they don’t align with your learning style/preferences, if they aren’t organized, communicative, a good pilot with solid flying skills who can effectively teach those skills, if they don’t respect your time and money, and if the think it’s going to take more than 60 hours, then move on and find another instructor.

Some young instructors are pretty good and responsible but we’re seeing a lot of instructors being cultivated by predatory schools and culture which is not helpful. This is not a fraternity where you have to pay your dues, survive the hazing, and wait until you get to do the same when you’re a CFI.

My favorite instructors to fly with are middle-aged or even senior citizens that are in the CFI profession because they’re passionate about aviation and education. You may have to hunt around a few different airports to find one but they’re out there and commonly found and smaller airports.

Over many years of flying and training, a good pilot is always learning, I’ve encountered several predatory operations but have found many healthy flight educators.

One example of one of the healthiest flight school is a place called Twin Oaks, in Oregon. They’re a family owned, private airport on the old family farm. The great granddad mowed an airstrip back in the 1950’s or around then. The son help his father build it. The son grew up in aviation and farming. When he took over, he and his wife built it into a flight school and poured their money into building a great private airport facility, with hangars and space for the aviation community to come together. Son was a pilot, A&P, CFI, and did it all. When he and his wife had kids, their kids grew up in aviation and flight instruction. One kid became an A&P and built an aircraft maintenance business on the family airport. Their daughter became an airline captain who married another captain. At some point in their career, they took over the family flight training and airport management operation. The husband stepped back from the airlines, I think, and he became a DPE for the school and maybe does some professional flying on the side. They are the third generation to run this family flight training and community hub. They’re raising their kids in it. They still live on the farm/airport. They don’t have venture capital, they aren’t paying rent to a municipal authority. They own their planes outright and aren’t making payments. They invest in aircraft maintenance and updates. They aren’t responsible to shareholders or big corporations looking to maximize profits. They run a good business that is focused on cultivating good pilots, and they are among the most cost effective flight training operations I’ve seen west of the Rockies. Most of their CFis are former students. They have a decent number of professional CFis. Once in a while they get a CFi from somewhere else who may try some of the common schemes but they’re usually corrected or don’t last. They’re well managed and generally do the right thing.

I would imagine there are similar operations throughout the country, probably in smaller towns.

Hunt around, you may need to relocate, but put some time into finding a healthy flight school and healthy instructors that will help you achieve goals in a time and cost effective manner. Don’t accept predatory behavior. You’re the client, you’re spending your hard earned money, and you don’t have to accept bad service, instruction, or poor management practices.