{"id":1770,"date":"2011-01-24T04:00:01","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T09:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2011-06-24T13:53:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T17:53:11","slug":"the-high-cost-of-renting-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/?p=1770","title":{"rendered":"The High Cost of Renting"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1971, the cost of renting airplanes was expensive.\u00a0 The sad truth about aircraft rental today is that it still remains too expensive.\u00a0 <\/em>Relatively speaking, it is more expensive than 35 years ago.\u00a0 In 1971, a Cessna 150 cost $15 per hour.\u00a0 Divided by the minimum wage at that time of $1.60, the exchange was 9.4 hours of work per hour of flight. \u00a0Today the very same<\/em> Cessna 150, now old and tired, rents for about $80 per hour.\u00a0 At today\u2019s minimum wage of $7.25, that equals 11.0 work hours per flight hour.\u00a0 This begs the question of how in the world can young kids afford flight training.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Assuming the average private pilot spends 30 hours dual and 25 hours solo at $109.00 dual and $80.00 solo respectively, students will pay $5,270 in rental and instructional fees.\u00a0 Tacked onto this will follow other charges for ground instruction, textbooks, navigation plotters, computers, testing fees, and the bill for the checkride.\u00a0 All told, the final cost for earning a private pilot certificate can easily exceed $6000 or $7000, sometimes more than $10,000.<\/p>\n

Six or seven thousand dollars is a lot of money.\u00a0 Young people, especially those with dreams right out of high school, don\u2019t have that kind of money.\u00a0 Consequently, they spend their money on things more within their grasp, putting off flying lessons until later.\u00a0 Sometimes a whole lifetime later; sometimes forever.\u00a0 And who suffers?\u00a0 They do and so do those of us in the aviation industry.\u00a0 Eventually, the flying public will also suffer\u2014airlines have already canceled flights for lack of aircrew.<\/p>\n

In aviation training today, dual rates average $95 to $150 per hour or more.\u00a0 Students have grumbled about the high cost of flight training while assuming flight instructors and flight school owners are getting rich.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as those of us in the business know, such is not the case.<\/p>\n

While it would seem flight school operators enjoy a high degree of profit, in most cases this is untrue.\u00a0 Those who reap the rewards of high rental rates are the gas companies, parts manufacturers, insurance carriers, and local governments.\u00a0 Oh by the way, those rewards are relatively small.\u00a0 In short, everyone is profiting from the high costs except the owner of the flight school and the flight instructors.\u00a0 Unfortunately, many suppliers and vendors have their fingers in the money bucket.<\/p>\n

Assuming a small flight school has five aircraft and a small operation at a municipal airport, the numbers might stack up something like this for an operation of 2500 hours per year:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a rather conservative estimate.\u00a0 As you can see, the cost of operation is at $113.20 per hour for the aircraft.\u00a0 That\u2019s cost.\u00a0 Tack on 15 percent for profit\u2014again, a rather conservative estimate\u2014and the rental rate comes out to be $130 per hour.\u00a0 At a 15 percent markup, the owner of the flight school nets only $42,450.\u00a0 After taxes, take home is about $29,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one is getting rich at that rate.<\/p>\n

-30-<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2011 J. Clark<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1971, the cost of renting airplanes was expensive.\u00a0 The sad truth about aircraft rental today is that it still remains too expensive.\u00a0 Relatively speaking, it is more expensive than 35 years ago.\u00a0 In 1971, a Cessna 150 cost $15 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,6,8,9],"tags":[320,329,816,839,862,966,1157,1401,1443,1468,1646,1731,1875,1950,2055,2155,2396,2502,2795,2886,2897,3030,3032,3282,3396,3514,3518,3569,3712,4023],"class_list":["post-1770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-aviation-history","category-flight-instructing","category-flying-2","category-life-in-general","category-personal","tag-airlines","tag-airplanes","tag-cessna-150","tag-cessnas","tag-checkride","tag-computers","tag-discipline","tag-final-cost-for-earning-a-private-pilot-certificate","tag-flight-instructors","tag-flying","tag-getting-rich","tag-ground-instruction","tag-how-can-young-kids-afford-flight-training","tag-inexperienced-pilots","tag-judgment","tag-learning-to-fly","tag-minimum-wage","tag-navigation-plotters","tag-pilots","tag-private-pilot","tag-professional-pilots","tag-rental-and-instructional-fees","tag-renting-airplanes","tag-solo-students","tag-student-pilots","tag-testing-fees","tag-textbooks","tag-the-aviation-industry","tag-the-high-cost-of-renting","tag-training-aircraft"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3295,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/3295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeclarksblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}