It was the same way back in the early 90s. Nothing new.

I'm an active CFI and I work for a "mill." We had a good number of students enrolled in our last two private pilot classes. There is one lender that is still giving out money for flight training....Uncle Sam. It is still pretty easy for part 141 university students to get financing through the government.

Two things make me laugh. I always ask my students on their first lesson, "why aviation?" Roughly 90% say they just want to fly the "heavies" and "see the world." Eventually, after a few more lessons, they will ask me why I haven't left to go work at the airlines.

Students (and the parents of the younger students) are not doing their research. Again, 90% of them have no idea that you have to "build" time and pay your dues. The schools tell them they can get their ratings, graduate and then walk right into an airline job. They buy it.

Now that's about the best thing I've read on this board in a long time...thanks for the laugh!

....not that I disagree with you BTW....

I didn't have the patience to read all previous 9 pages, so forgive me if this was covered, but how does one spend 100K-200K for flight training? When I trained in the early 90's, I spent well less than 30K to get all my ratings up through MEII, and that included buying almost all my hours to reach 250 TT- and a 60 hour chunk of multi time.

Does that 100K-200K figure include a four year degree (you know, the one that isn't worth more than one from the local community college)?

I'm just curious where these figures come from.

Flight training costs have exploded in the last couple of years. If you go the FBO route, which I did, these days it's running close to the 60K mark to go through MEI. That is also with essentially no Multi time. It's hard to pay for even a little of that when FBOs are charging ~$250/hr to rent an old seminole.

I also went to a state school to get my degree, which ran me a total of $24K for tuition and fees (excluding books, etc). All said and done, I've spent about 80-85K total, but can easily see if you go to a private school, or flying g1000 airplanes, how it can rack up quickly.

Do those high costs for training also include billeting and other living expenses at the aviation universities? Basically a combination of tuition, books, fees, billeting, AND flight training on top of all those costs.

USMCFLYR

I didn't get an aviation degree, but when I was shopping around for colleges a few years back I looked at some aviation degree programs. They usually broke it down and gave you a number with tuition, fees, dorms, estimated books; and then they usually had an estimated flight training cost; and then gave you a grand total estimate - variable for books and flight training and a few other options.

Yes - that is my point. I really don't remember my costs for flight training back in the mid 80s, and they couldn't have been near as much as we have been writing about here, but if I would look at the breal down of my college costs PLUS my flight training costs - I'm sure it was expensive for the time (btw I went the FBO route but I think we had the 141 type of syllabus with *off-wing* stage checkrides and other such things htat I didn't do/have access to when I was just working one-on-one with a singel CFI)

USMCFLYR

Adjusting for inflation, I'm sure it was still a big cost back then, too. Fuel costs have really been a driving factor in the cost of flight training, especially 1-2 years ago. It's definitely a big investment, but definitely do-able if you're smart about it. Barriers to entry are high for other professions as well...my wife and I are looking at 100K+ for her grad school:eek:

Agreed - but I am amazed at the prices I see on this forum. Someone in this thread listed ~$250/hr for a Seminole. I paid $110/hr for a Seneca II to train for my ME rating and that was the most expensive trainer on the airfield (there were only two ME trainers I think and the other one was a Duchess and less costly).
I think I paid $35/hr (wet) for the C-152 and $62/hr for the Arrow that I enjoyed flying. Of course the minimum wage I was making was $3.25/hr too :):(

USMCFLYR