The flying club that I currently instruct at pays $20/hour, which is really good given that I am only at the 350 hour point. However, finding students is tough, especially beacuse they have to 'buy' into the club before I can instruct them, that deters a lot of potential students. Even at the flying club, wages have completely stagnated. I talk to pilots that CFI'd there in the 90's and got $20/hour back then. 15 years ago $20/hour went a lot farther than it does now. Also, according to them, hours were a lot easier to come by because the club had 7 planes (now it is down to 2) and a steady flow new students.
With a few exceptions, flight instructor pay is horrendous. I've seen places that charge 40-60/hour to students for an instructor, but turn around and only pay the cfi $8-15 of it. I was offered a job at one of these places that payed only $8.50/hour, and according to their website they charge students $45/hour for the CFI. I've found quite a few places where the pay is slightly better, but no guarantee of students, and $15/hour when you have to go out and find students is going to make living tough.
Originally Posted by
CFItillIdie
Flight schools in the area where I worked at were charging between 45-65 bucks for instructors... The sad thing is that the schools always took slightly less than half the above rates.
Even for places like you mentioned that pay half of 45-65/hour, with the wx Chicago has there is going to be a lot of time where these CFIs are grounded. How many Chicago CFI's are averaging a lot more than 50ish hours a month? Even 60 hours a month at $30/hour is only around $21k per year before taxes. On my job hunt I have yet to come across anything that pays close to $30/hour that doesn't require like at least 500 hours of given.
The instructors that are catering to the higher clientele can definitely make livable wages, but breaking into that sector of the instructing market is difficult. You need a good amount of experience to build up a client base, and have the hours to qualify for some of these people's insurance policies. I agree with others, for the people who want to instruct for a living getting into one of these niche markets is the way to go, but it is not easy to break into these areas for a newer instructor.