Hey all just wanted to get some opinions on my next step in aviation. I am 24 and currently work IT. Not sure if in the future I'll decide to do anything commercially with aviation, but I want to work towards my ratings so I have the option. I just finished my ppl as you all know from my checkride posts.

My next step is I want to get my instrument ticket. Just curious if any one has gotten theirs recently and the price. I actually worked through pilot finance for my PPL, and it was great. For my first 6-7 lessons for my private I tried pay as you go but that didn't work well for me. My lessons were too spread out so it would have taken me longer to finish.

There are some great interest rate options at my own bank at work for personal loans, however the maximum is $6,000. Just wondering if that seems feasible to any one. Wet rate of a 152 at the flight school I use is $96/hr i believe.

Just putting feelers out for ideas. Another notion was just to save up the money and then start once I have it all accumulated. However I do not want to wait so long as to forget a lot of what I learned from my private pilot training.

Thanks guys!

Stop getting loans, you are only 24.

This. Do not finance a $20K/year starting salary job, and most certainly do not finance a hobby if that's all it is.

You can do a sizable portion of your instrument ticket in a sim, which will defray the cost. Then just do one lesson per week, say on a Saturday. If that's a stretch, find somewhere in your budget to cut a few bucks.

It sounds nerdy, but a desktop computer flight sim does work.

A couple of points to consider:

Students rarely complete a flight course in the minimum amount of hours required by the FAA. So in calculating the instrument course price you should budget by at least a factor of 1.5

While a 152 can legally be used as an instrument trainer, you really won't be getting proper instrument training in it (don't short yourself on instrument training by going the budget route, safety is the prime goal here). A proper instrument trainer panel should include at least dual nav/comms and a GPS. This would be tight if not impossible due to the weight limitations of the 152. Even if it were possible, no flight school would have an radio stack installed in it that is worth more than the airframe itself.

One FAR part 61 Instrument prerequisite is to gain 50 PIC x-country hours. This alone comes out to $4,800

The Instrument Rating course itself would cost somewhere around $8960. This assumes a budget 1.5 times greater than the minimum required hours, the 152 price you quoted and a CFI that costs somewhere around $40/hr, including about 20 hours of extra ground instruction.

If you really want your Instrument Rating, start saving for it. In the mean time, you can start working off those 50 PIC x-country hours you'll need.

Good Luck!

Yeah, should be able to do it for that. Do as much as you can on a sim. Those hours are able to be logged towards your rating and will save a ton. Then just go out and do the rest in the plane. I think you should easily get it under 6k if you do the sim method.

Thanks for the responses. Yeah I could do for a while without getting a loan. And yeah slowly but surely I am getting X-country PIC hours.

I'll try my best not to be in a rush, even though it's quite difficult .

Yes, he beat me to it. A typical 172 is fine, but not a 152. The 152 is not stable enough so it makes BAI flying harder. Although that might make you a better instrument pilot in the end it probably be frustrating and possibly expensive at first.

I would say you need at least dual NAV/COMM, DME, and marker lights. The GPS would be nice but I feel folks should learn the basic needle instruments first and only then progress to GPS. You could learn all you need about GPS while doing your CPL.

This time will count towards your CPL total time so you you only need to budget for it once.


Anf yes MSFS or the like can be very helpful to re-inforce procedures, scan, etc. But I would learn how to do it right with a real sim and CFI first and then practice good habits on MSFS. Otherwise you might acquire bad habits playing a video game.

$6000!! Yikes!!!

Isnt the ATP 15 day IFR course something like $6995? Could be an option to save up the cash and hit it all at once instead of having 1 flight per week over many months?

These courses aren't designed to create safe pilots, basic learning theory states that it takes time to learn a skill properly. While you certainly can pass a check ride (they are more or less in-house) this way, a quick course like this leaves a lot to be desired. IMO, it would be a terrible return of investment.