Is Flight School Worth It?

If You Have Not Had A Medical Examination Yet

Do this before you spend anything beyond a discovery flight. A first-class medical is required to exercise airline transport pilot privileges, and a number of conditions can complicate or block it — some cardiac history, some psychiatric medication, certain vision issues, sleep apnoea, a substance-related driving conviction. Many are resolvable with a special issuance. Some are not, and the resolution can take a year.

Committing to $89,000 of training and then discovering you cannot hold the medical is the single worst outcome in this industry, and it happens. An appointment with an aviation medical examiner takes an afternoon. Do that first.

• See an aviation medical examiner before you enroll
• Ask specifically about first-class standards, not just third-class
• Disclose everything; the reconsideration process punishes omissions

If You Are Over About 55

Airline pilots retire at 65, and that is a hard statutory wall rather than a convention. Starting from zero at 55 means roughly two years of training, one to two years of instructing, and then perhaps six or seven years of airline flying — most of it at the junior end of the pay scale, where the money and the schedules are worst.

That can still be a wonderful thing to do. It is not an investment, and anybody presenting it to you as one is not being straight with you. If you are 55 and you want to fly, we would rather sell you the $10,900 Standard Private Pilot Program and a lot of good weekends.

• Mandatory retirement — age 65
• Realistic airline earning window starting at 55 — 6 to 8 years
• Better option in most cases — Standard private package at $10,900

If You Need Reliable Income Within Three Years

The training period is a hole in your earnings and the instructing period is a shallow one. If you have a mortgage that does not care about your career plans, or dependants relying on your current salary, the honest advice is to train part-time while keeping the job, accept that it will take three to four years rather than two, and go in with your eyes open about what that slower pace does to the timeline.

• Training period with little or no flying income — 18 to 24 months
• Instructing period while building to 1,500 hours — 12 to 18 months
• Part-time route — slower, safer, and longer overall

If You Are Financing It At A Rate You Have Not Calculated

Borrowing $89,000 is a serious decision and the interest is not a footnote. Work out the total repayment, not the monthly payment. If a lender will only tell you the monthly figure, that is the answer to a different question than the one you should be asking.

We work with Stratus Financial and run in-house payment plans from $2,500 down, and we will happily sit with you and go through the total cost of credit rather than the brochure number. If it does not work, it does not work, and you should know that in week one.

• Ask for total repayment over the full term, in dollars
• Compare against paying stage by stage from cash flow
• In-house plans and Stratus Financial — from $2,500 down, neither compulsory

If You Want To Fly For Fun And Are Trying To Justify It Financially

Stop. A private pilot certificate returns nothing, by regulation — you cannot be compensated for flying it. The right question is whether $10,900 and six to nine months buys you something you will genuinely use, and the way to answer that is to go flying for $229 rather than to build a spreadsheet.

• Private certificate financial return — zero, by law
• Standard Private Pilot Program — $10,900, one fixed price
• Correct way to decide — one $229 discovery flight