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hey guys charlie from airplane academy here by the end of this video you are going to know how much the private pilot's license costs and the specific details that go into that pricing so that you can better understand for your specific scenario a closer estimate of what it's going to run you and then we're also going to cover three really actionable things that can save you money on this license and i promise even if you do the first one i promise it will save you money it definitely did for me so let's dive right in so the average price for the private pilot's license is about 10 grand and this is different from a sports pilot's license to fly lsa or light sport aircraft and so we can cover that in a separate video that has some restrictions associated with it it can actually be a really good idea for certain people in certain scenarios but we're talking about the private license here so it costs about 10 grand but for every person you talk to that says it costs them more than that you also run into someone who says it costs them a little bit less than that for example one of my buddies in kansas shout out to you matt thanks for watching uh just finishes private and it costs about 8 300 bucks in kansas and there's some good reasons as to why there's a range and that's because you don't just write the faa a check for 10 grand go through the training get your license there's a lot of things that go into it so all of that to say it's really important that we cover each one of those things these variables the things that you're gonna have to invest in to get the license so that you can have a better estimate as to what exactly it's going to cost you so what are those things the first thing is the actual plane you're going to be flying at least 40 hours by the regs so you're gonna have to be renting an airplane or paying for an airplane in some capacity for those hours you're also going to be paying for the instructor you'll be paying for ground school you'll be getting your medical certificate and then you're also going to be paying for exams both written exams and then your practical exam at the very end also known as your check ride now you're also going to be acquiring some gear in the process of getting your license but we're not really going to cover the costs associated with it in this video just because there's such a wide spectrum i mean you can get all the way through your private just borrowing gear frankly and then you can upgrade later on or you can buy everything new out of the gate and so there's a real wide range here and so it's not something you absolutely have to pay for because there's some other options that you can pursue but we just really just want to cover the actual expenses you have to incur to get your license here so we're going to leave gear off to the side for the time being so let's dive into each of these and talk about some of the drivers so we can better understand what it's going to cost you in your specific situation okay so let's start with how much the airplane is going to cost you now there's two main things that drive the cost here it's how many hours you need the airplane for and then how much does that cost per hour now to get your private pilot's license you need at least 40 hours of flying and that's made up of dual instruction and then also solo flight so we're going to assume 40 hours here for how long you need the airplane for now some people might take longer than that and that's definitely one of things we're going to cover in how to save money but as a starting point let's assume the 40 hours which is the requirement for the license the second component driving the cost of the airplane is the hourly rental rate now this is going to have a really wide range but i would start with about 125 to 175 dollars per hour as a baseline assumption now the biggest thing driving this cost is what type of airplane you're actually flying there's going to be an enormous difference between a 50 or 60 year old airplane you're renting versus a brand new 172 with a g1000 cockpit right that's probably going to be the biggest thing driving the cost differential you know geography could have a little bit to do with it but really the type of airplane is going to be the biggest thing one other thing to look out for and just read the fine print is whether or not your rental rate is a wet or a dry rate what this means is whether or not it includes fuel and so if you're seeing a really really low rate out there i would just make sure that does include fuel because there might be that might not be kind of the total baked in cost of the rental if you're saying oh i found one for 40 bucks an hour well just make sure it's actually 40 bucks an hour there's more than likely some stuff on top of that most rentals that i've ever done have always been a wet rate but that is going to be driving some of the variability so you'll want to look into the fine print just a little bit so if we total those up and assume 40 flight hours times either 125 or 175 dollars per hour for the airplane you get a range of about five to seven thousand dollars just for the aircraft rental and getting your private pilot's license now this is still a lot of money but to me that's kind of an encouragement uh that most of the you know 10 000 or so is actually going towards the airplane itself it's not just going to wasted kind of overhead and that sort of thing you're actually getting to be in the airplane which is what you're trying to do in the first place so to me it's still a lot of money but at least it's going to something that you're actually wanting to do the second component of your private pilot's license cost is the instructor now as of this filming of the 40 required flight hours you have to have to get your private 30 of those have to be flown with an instructor now there's gonna be a wide range in how much an instructor costs you per hour in my own experience it's been about 35 to 75 dollars per hour now one thing to ask your flight school or your one-off instructor is am i going to be charged for um you know just the time that i'm flying with you or does kind of the pre-flight briefing and post-flight briefing am i also being charged for that in my own experience unless i'm needing to do kind of a separate one-off hey we're just spending a few hours on ground school here if it's just a flight lesson i was only charged for instructional time when the prop was spinning and kind of the pre-flight and post flight was kind of wrapped into that and if i had to do again a couple hours of ground or something then i would be charged for that but you'll just want to do a little bit more research in your situation to better understand what exactly you're paying for but if we total up those ranges of 35 to 75 an hour times the 30 required instructional hours we get a range of about a thousand dollars to about twenty two hundred dollars for the instructor now one thing worth noting here is that the airplane cost and the instructor cost might not actually be separately called out depending on your situation for example if you're working with the flight school a lot of times they'll kind of sell you a package and they'll just kind of give you a blended rate and so i would just ask for a little bit more detail as to you know how much of this is going towards the airplane how much is going towards the instructor how am i going to be charged with the instructor is the you know pre-flight and post-flight briefing going to be added on to that etc etc so you can just better understand exactly what you're paying for the third thing you'll be paying for is ground school now i'm not talking about the type of ground school that's kind of in the pre and post flight briefing i'm talking about the dedicated ground school that's getting you ready for your written exam in order to take your written you have to have an endorsement from an instructor saying that you are ready to in fact take this and so there's a few different ways to accomplish ground school two of the ways that i've done it have been through online programs like a king schools which i've really really loved and you can do at your own pace and they'll send you an endorsement at the end or you can also do you know like an intensive ground school weekend i did this at american flyers here in dallas a couple times whereas a three day weekend and you're working every day like eight to six on a ground school and just cranking through the material and you take your written at the end i found that really really effective also there's a bunch of different ways to do it you kind of just want to focus on your own learning style if you like to do it kind of remotely and at your own pace or if you want to be in person so you can ask someone questions face to face that sort of thing but the kind of the range here is about 250 to 500 for ground school depending on whether you do it online or in person as a weekend that sort of thing there's lots of different ways to do it here but that's probably kind of a starting range of how much it's going to cost you the fourth thing you'll be paying for is your medical certificate now this is going to kind of vary based off of what type of medical you're getting whether a third or second or first class medical and you'll learn about that in ground school as to why you would need any one of those but a good starting range for this is about 75 to 200 and it'll vary a little bit based on your specific flight surgeon the last thing you'll be paying for are the actual exams now there's two main exams you'll be paying for it it's almost three but it's really just bucketed into two and the first is your actual written exam and then the second is your practical exam also known as your check ride which consists of an oral exam and then also your flight and so in my mind there's kind of three things you have to do it's the written the oral and the flight but those last two are actually kind of baked together in in one expense so really just two things you're paying for the written and then the practical as far as the written goes as of this filming it's a hundred and sixty dollars to take the exam now the company that manages and administers all of these if you take the test at one of their uh own testing facilities it's a little bit cheaper it's like 94 or 96 it's like a very specific amount but it's about 95 bucks versus the 160 but if you take it one of their affiliate centers like a lot of flight schools will be an affiliate and like an approved testing center then count on 160. now one interesting stat about the written exam i wanted to share is that back in 2019 the faa reported that about 36 000 people took their private pilot license written exam and it had a 91 pass rate with an average score of 83 and a half and so if you're worried about having to incur that 160 expense again i just want you to know the data is on your side there is a very very high uh pass rate with a pretty high passing score it's not just you know the average score is a 70. it's almost an 84 so there's a pretty good chance you won't have to take it a second time now for the practical exam your actual check ride this is going to have kind of a range and it's just going to depend on your actual examiner you can go ahead and ask your flight school or your instructor the examiners that they like to work with and they'll already know their fees generally it ranges from about four to five hundred dollars you might find them for less than that but that's a pretty good starting point and so count on about four hundred to five hundred dollars just to pay the examiner for the actual exam and then you're also probably going to have to rent the airplane again at you know 125 to 175 an hour count on about two hours needing that airplane it could be a little bit less but if you total all of this up 160 for the written about four to five hundred dollars for the practical and then two hours of renting the airplane at 125 to 175 dollars you end up with about 800 to about a thousand dollars for all of your exams so if we total all of these numbers up you'll notice that we get a range of about seventy two hundred dollars to about eleven thousand dollars for the private pilot's license again i would say the average is probably closer to about ten grand but now that you kind of better understand all the drivers of the cost you can start to fill these assumptions in with the own data that you're gathering as you're talking to flight schools and instructors and that sort of thing and have a much more confident estimate as to what it's going to cost you so now that we know about how much it costs how do we bring this number down now i'm going to give you the top three ways that i've been able to do this in my own experience but there's a lot of other ways to do it also and i've put them in an article over at airplaneacademy.com the link will be down in the description or you can also just google airplane academy private pilot's license cost and it'll come up there in the search results where i give you other ways more so than just these three to save on it but let's dive right into those the first way to save money and i would say this is absolutely the number one way you can save money is to fly often it sounds simple but if we go back and look at the cost breakdown that we just went through well where does the majority of the cost come from in the private pilot's license it's from the airplane and the instructor it's actually doing the flying and so if you're having to repeat lessons because you're only able to fly once a month or something well that's immediately going to add up to a very large amount it can be several hundred dollars per lesson just to go do it and so if you're repeating even if you have to repeat four or five lessons two times that's that's easily a thousand dollars or more you're adding to it it doesn't have to be that way so i would just encourage you to fly as much as you can i remember when i was getting my instrument rating i flew two to three times a week it was a little easier because i could do it at night after work um in a way that you know for the private most of it's during the day so i had a little bit of an advantage there but i was able to fly several times a week consistently and i cranked it out i didn't have to repeat anything and so i i would just encourage you to find and dedicate a season that you can just crank through this because if you can't and you're having to stop halfway or repeat stuff maybe it's just going to turn into a very very expensive thing very quickly the second way to save money is to inquire about buying in bulk or block hours some flight schools will give significant discounts if you pay for some or all of the expense up front because the reality is a lot of students quit halfway through their training and so fly schools and instructors are also trying to solve that problem they want to have committed students they want to have people that can make it to the end here and finish their rating and a lot of times they're willing to financially incentivize that to happen and so if you're in a financial position to do so i would absolutely inquire about getting some bulk discounts and it doesn't even have to be the entire rating it can just be hey well what if i pay for five hours or ten hours up front instead of you know all 40 i bet they're going to be willing to work with you so the worst they can say is no i would just definitely encourage you to ask and the third way to save money is to choose a different airplane there's a significant cost savings if you choose to to train in a more basic aircraft than in like a brand new g1000 equipped aircraft and some flight schools will also let you train in both if they have both aircraft i remember american flyers you know kind of offered uh to to do some of your training in the g1000 and then most of it in kind of the typical six-pack steam gauges uh kind of more traditional cockpit and avionics suite and that can be a good way to kind of get exposed to both get training in both but not have all your training being a very very sophisticated aircraft that ends up having a lot of cost associated with it so where possible consider just training in a different airplane so with all of this information in mind knowing that it's a significant financial investment i have one question to ask you is now the right time for you to become a pilot i put together a separate video that talks about four reasons you might consider waiting to become a pilot because it's a significant financial and time investment i don't want anyone to get halfway through their license and realize oh man this isn't a good time to do this or this isn't even for me i would hate to have that happen that'd be a waste of your time and money and i don't want that for anyone but i also want everyone to be able to pursue aviation because it's changed my life and i think it can change yours also so i'd encourage you to watch that video the link will be up in the corner and down in the description and i hope it helps you pursue aviation with just a little bit more confidence so hope to see you over in that video thanks so much for watching i hope it was helpful leave me a comment down below if you have any questions i'd be happy to talk with you down there and we'll see you guys in the next episode