Financing for a part 61 school
 

Hello Everyone,

I am a wannabee that has always wanted to be a commercial pilot and has just graduated from a 4 year college with an unrelated degree. I have a couple of part 141 options available to me (community college and ATP) but was wondering how to finance a mom and pop flight school. I have a flight school near my house that I could do all of my ratings much cheaper than the part 141 school but I have no real ideas on how to get an unsecured personal loan for that amount.

Thanks for any suggestions

Check in with your local banks. Personal loans are all that you can get for a local flight school unless it’s tied to a university you can get a student loan with a much lower interest rate.

I’m at my local FBO currently paying out of pocket and scrapping the bottom of the barrel and I’m only flying 3 days a week. I’m also a recent college graduate with $20k student loan debt hanging over my head.

Personal loans are going to have a high interest rate 12-15% roughly. If you can afford working full time and fly at least 3 days a week you can get all of your ratings in about 1-1.5 years.

My instructor got a 60k personal loan and is paying ridiculous amounts of interest 16%! Your banks might offer you a lower rate, shop around you might get lucky.

It really comes down to how fast you want to get all your ratings and the amount of debt your willing to get yourself into.


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Thanks for the response! It seems like any cost savings from the part 61 school is killed by that insane interest rate. I'll have to shop around in the PHX area and see if anything comes a little lower than that.

Why not get a job with that degree and pay as you go?

It is a BS in political science so I would be working pretty crazy hours in a campaign making very little or going to law school so the loans would be a better option for me. I wish I could be able to get a full time job out of school to pay for it though

Thanks for the post! That's what I was thinking was the case. I'll go track down some local banks to see which one has the lowest interest rate and go from there

How about any other job?
Work work work and Uber on the side of your car is not too old, save up about $5-$7k and start flight training.
There’s no easy way to do this.
If I didn’t mention it before, work work work and try to do this debt free.
You already have student loans.

Hey. I’m in the same situation as you. I’m currently paying off student loans on my bachelors degree in another field. I’m working full time while working towards my private license on weekends. I’m paying out of pocket for now but once I complete my private I think I’ll need to quit the full time job and attempt flight school at a quicker pace. Besides ATP we have a school on Long Island that offers student loans thru Wells Fargo. I’m also considering looking out of state. It really feels like it takes forever when you can only fly an hour or 2 on weekends.

I suppose the thought of enlisting in the Guard or Reserves isn’t an option? No that wouldn’t help the immediate $$ issues, but it could provide options down the road.

Back in the day I was pretty gund-ho, a parent had to sing the O.K. since I was under 18. Yeah, some of that military stuff isn’t for everybody, think it through.

I did my flight training part 61 and just bought 10 hour blocks of flight time with a credit card.