Charging for ground time 101
 

I am currently reading Greg Brown's excellent book written for especially new CFIs titled "The Savvy Flight Instructor." The book was written a few years ago and I just got reading the part on why it is important to provide adequate instruction and to charge for the services given. He tells a story of an instance when he gave an introductory lesson for a wealthy individual (who had a Mercedes). Following the lesson the client was surprised at having to pay a mere $79 an hour which included instruction. The client thought that Greg was a true professional and that he should be paid much, much more than that. Greg brings home the point that as CFIs we are indeed professional pilots and must not feel guilty about charging for our services. As a new CFI who just got out of training, I have to be honest, somedays I feel guilty and have a constant battle inside my head whether or not to charge that .2 or .3 hours of ground time. Just to be a nice guy, on most days I undercharge my students only because I was in their situation only a mere month ago. But reading this chapter reminds me that I am now a professional and that not once did a student ask me to give him/her a break on ground time. I would appreciate any thoughts on this matter. Did any of you CFIs go through the guilt trip that I went through? Now I am not saying that I am going to overcharge them, but I am definitely going to work on being fair, providing good instruction, and staying away from undercharging...

Yea I think a lot of guys go through this especially if you are working with good students that are scraping by with extra jobs, etc to pay for it. I would pretty much expect to charge them for .3-.5 per lesson. That's time for a proper briefing and debriefing and filling out the necessary paperwork and recordkeeping requirements for the student. We all know whose fault it will be if the paperwork isn't right. I've never had guys balk at it as long as it is fair.

As long as you are providing services as a professional you have the right to get paid. If you feel that you're not providing an extra service for the pre/post flight briefing don't charge for it. Personally I feel that even if I am not out at the airplane doing a preflight with my student, I am still providing a service by being at their disposal should anything come up in say a weather forecast or the pre-flight where they need my professional input. Even if we fly 1.5 hours on the Hobbs, I am still at their disposal for the full 2 hour block.

If you are depending on flight instruction for serious income and plan to eat next month, you had better charge the going rate for the time you spend sitting there doing things to help students learn. I have to admit, it is hard sometimes to keep the clock running while a poor student hears a lecture that often degenerates into minutia. So what you should do is ask the other instructors what they typically charge per week and per lesson, and do the same.

By this argument I am seriously undercharging my students at the flying club I currently work for. Their policy is no charge for ground school. I think this is a ridiculous policy. It what they do and I want to work for them, so I also have to do it by consensus. They all have lucrative jobs and this is a hobby to them. Not good, not professional. I told them they should charge $35 an hour for ALL ground time and they said we don't do that here. False charity. I told them if you do not charge the instructor has no incentive to do anything besides fly, which ultimately costs the student more flight time. I was right, they were wrong... but the majority ruled.

Charge at least $35 an hour for your ground school time and generally include a half hour ground per flight hour or at least per flight lesson. That's a MINIMUM. If you stay longer, the clock runs on. It will reduce flight time thus making it a sound value to students.

When I was a CFI, I undercharged (like just about everyone else) at first. It took me a while to realize that I was providing a service, and no matter what, the client is paying for that service/professionalism the entire time. I was more "fair" later on. I didn't charge for pre-flight when I wasn't with the student (so it was assumed they would pre-flight on their own after the first few introductory flights), but as soon as I was there at the airplane doing MY checks, the clock was ticking again (considering pre-briefing). If we had to wait for some issue, the clock was ticking. Let me ask, WHO is responsible for that student's safety while you are with them? It's resting on YOU, and I have had students with ladders about to try and move around the front of the aircraft while another was taxiing past, so as far as I'm concerned, it's the entire time you are with that student, and that's being "nice", since I'm still required to be there while someone does preflight and if they screw up, it's STILL my butt.

I'd say ground time was averaging .7-.8, significantly more for those first few lessons where you teach preflight, not a whole lot less than the .8 figure though, that's usually what it was. Sometimes the average with CFI-students was a bit more, as I'd go into more depth with them, so more like maybe 1hr. Think about all the things you are really supposed to check for each flight, what is really required by regulations, aircraft condition, and of course pre and de-brief.

I would ALWAYS encourage my students to preflight EFFICIENCTLY and I'd try to give as much help as possible to do this, but if I had the student that decided to give the aircraft an "annual" with a 45 minute preflight, I'd be standing out there after a little more than 20 minutes and I'd make him pay for that extra time it took to preflight. This would usually be after disussing it a few times, and I would NEVER tell them to "speed it up" while they are doing it, but I also have other students have to try and schedule to utilize my time efficiently.

Now, I wouldn't charge for time that was not spent towards completion of the unit, like lunch, or make any "special deals" (I'll charge you x amount less if you buy me lunch) and so on. There are many ways to be unethical, and most likely CFIs are fairly young without a solid foundation of such things, but most do ok, if usually undercharging. Just don't do any stupid stuff that will get you fired from your flight school or do any of the same stuff on your OWN that would have the same result IF you worked for a flight school. Sometimes they don't put out a whole lot of guidance saying what things to not do, but that doesn't mean you should do them.

Some instructors actually resort to using a stop-watch. It's not a bad idea.

I think we all go through this. I would trade some ground time if we stopped for lunch on a cross country. By this time, my students were self sufficient that all I had to do was scan the planning, ask a few questions on notams, weather, and airspace, and off we went. You have to think about the trade off. By stopping, you get a few extra tenths just to get airborne again

Thanks gents. I think part of being a new instructor is to be able to keep your students coming. Hence my erroneous justification for undercharging...Cub, your situation is unfortunate and is very unprofessional in the part of management. It is clear to me that we CFIs need to be adequately compensated for the instruction we provide, after all we have a tremendous amount of responsibility in ensuring aviation safety. Yes I do it full-time and work for an FBO so not only do I need to make a living, but also the FBO is counting on making money off of me. Respect the profession, provide adequate instruction, help students learn, and most of all be professional.

I'm cool with CFIs charging ground time, but as a suggestion make it clear to the student when the clock actually starts ticking and when it ends.

I've had CFIs in the past charge me for ground time when we were clearly "shooting the bull". as stated above, I get you would start charging because you are making yourself available. But when we are hanging around because the plane is late or not immediately available or waiting for bad weather to clear up, that's not alright to charge a student for that stuff.

My two cents :cool:

My two cents: Don't charge for ground instruction unless everyone else in your area is doing it.

Why? I found when I was instructing (circa 1980's), my students didn't absorb the ground instruction when they felt like they were paying by the minute. Was I giving it away free? No, it was factored into my hourly rate for the instruction in the plane.

I instructed in two totally different areas of the country and therefore had two totally different kinds of students and therefore different kinds of bosses.

Area one was a major metro area where the students were older and had established careers and the money that went along with their careers. They were mostly doing flying as a hobby. We usually scheduled for 2 hour blocks. The Chief Instructor would bust our balls if the ground + flight time came to less than 1.8 or 1.7 (1.4 flight should have .3-.6 ground added to it) Hes theory was two fold. 1. We are professionals and so are the students. The students have an established life and understand and even want to pay for the services rendered. 2. If we are doing less than 1.7 or 1.8 hours of work in that 2 hour block then we are wasting too much time or not providing a good service to the student.

Area two as a smaller city, but one that had a huge aviation community. Most of the students here were young college aged kids like myself. Unlike the big city most of the students here wanted to make a career out of flying. Also here most of my students were also considered friends of mine. I still charged for ground on each lesson, but I would probably under charge by .1 or .2 my theory behind it was that these students were just like me and didn't have the extra money and I felt it benefited both myself and student if their money got them more time in the plane.

So I guess I'm saying it kind of depends on your particular situation. I'm not saying that you should always undercharge, just do what you think is the most appropriate or fair for each particular situation. There were times where I traded instruction for things other than money..food, help move, rides in gliders, etc.