Flight Instructor Pay

[Bede]

This has been discussed before, but the info is quite dated (yes I used the search function).

What does your school pay for each class of instructor? What extra duties are required? Are you in a big city/hell hole?

Just discussing pay right now and looking for some comparisons.

Thanks.

[just curious]

I'd be interested in what Class II's are earning these days.

[FlaplessDork]

$40,000/Year as a class II. $45,000/year as a class I

[gaamin]

.

[Invertago]

$750/month + $25/hr (gnd school, briefings, solo supervision etc (if I have 2 solos out, I'm getting $50/hour)

I don't hang around the office all day if the Wx sucks as I write my own schedule based on work available.

I live in a nice city.

Experienced class 3.

[cgartly]

Instructors here get $16 hr for billable instruction time, $8 hr for working desk.

In a very nice city (Kelowna), I think that's the problem.......There is also no shortage of instructors here.

[Tim]

class 2 - 25.50/hr flying/briefing/sim, 28.50/hr groundschool, 260/paycheck base pay, 100/nav prog flight test

[Hedley]

*** edited ***

[Tim]

Class IV
$20 per hour ground or air instruction; most often charging less time than actually spent with student (does anyone charge all of that time?)
+200 base pay twice a month

why don't you charge for all of the time you spend with a student?

[Big Pistons Forever]

Instructors here get $16 hr for billable instruction time, $8 hr for working desk.

In a very nice city (Kelowna), I think that's the problem.......There is also no shortage of instructors here.

I assume this is the same place that charges the students to park their car

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I charge $95/hr (for advanced instruction). . says
I'm giving it away. He may be right!

The best benchmark of what you are worth Hedley is to charge what you are willing to work for taking into consideration what value you put on your experience and most important your ability to pass on knowledge and instill confidence in a student to make their learning curve shorter.

Advanced instruction is generally anything that is teaching a skill not generally taught by a FTU such as these skills you mentioned.

I prefer to do tailwheel, formation, aerobatic, formation
aerobatic, multi, IFR, weird type checkouts, etc. Basically
everything that a class 4 won't go near

I have not really done much training in the small airplane sector of aviation since I sold my school in the early nineties as I was flying in another sector of aviation where the rates I charged were not an issue because the pool of instructors were very limited.

For small airplane dual such as tail wheel and sea planes I charge $100.00 per hour or in the case of a client who wants to spend a day or part thereof flying his / her own airplane I just charge a flat rate of $500.00.

So all you have to do is up your rate $5.00 an hour and your rate is the same as mine.

P.S. :

If a client wants me to demonstrate a full feather and engine shut down on a light piston engine twin I do not have a rate for that as I teach by example......I never create an emergency situation where none existed before the lesson started.

It boggles my mind to see this practice still being taught in the 21 st century.

[MichaelP]

We pay $25 an hour regardless of the class of instructor and then we pay a base pay based on each instructor's class.
Class IV does not get a base pay.

I have done my best to raise instructor wages here, but I can tell you that 'base pay' does not work. It is counter productive!
Schools with lower pay and no base pay attract instructors just as well as schools that pay base pay, and these hungry instructors show up early and work late. They moan as we all moan, but their prime reason is for flying hours and not for money and this is wage depressing for everyone.

As for my own pay, it is better than most, but when I calculated what I was paid this week against the hours I have put in it works out to be a lot less than many unskilled labour jobs you can find outside and last night I was awake until 02:00 this morning thinking about it.
It's been a very busy summer and we have not got enough aircraft or instructors.
I do not believe in working instructors long hours when the pay is not that good, and so I work those extra hours myself and that means twelve hour days and often weeks with no time off for me during the summer.
But I believe in what I am doing.

The winter will be long and cold... Instructors are asking to be laid off so they can collect EI! This is especially true of the period between 29th January and 24th March as the fears from 9-11 will all but close us down while the Olympics take place.

The CFI's job is a highly responsible job, but we're all in aviation because we enjoy it right?
"If you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined".
Money was only one of the worries that kept me up last night...
I wrote in a student's PTR the same things as was written in his PTR 40 hours ago at another school.
We have a couple of decent enough people, but they are very slow learners and I don't want the 100 hour PPL reputation here as is seen elsewhere. A PPL is not for everyone it seems and I must decide how I handle it.
I'm not paid as a psychologist, but all instructors need some ability in this direction.

I can try to change things in this little school, treat people better, pay them better, but it is impossible to change the whole industry as it is evident that poorly paid instructors turn up at other schools, work long hours, just as much as better paid ones.
One has to try to convince the accountants that we should pay more for the same result! The heroic crusades were a long time ago....

[Invertago]

Class IV
$20 per hour ground or air instruction; most often charging less time than actually spent with student (does anyone charge all of that time?)
+200 base pay twice a month

If the instructor is sitting in the airplane helping the student understand something in the checklist (engine off) shouldn't that count as billable time?

Shouldn't billable time be the time the instructor spends 1 on 1 with the student, just because the engine is off doesn't mean the instructor isn't instructing.

Billable time shouldn't just be the start of the white board PGI till the end of the white board PGI, it should be the start of the instructor giving 100% of his attention to the student until the lesson is over and debriefed. If your time is taken up with the student, why not bill for it?


Now, to escape from the pilot-doctor, pilot-truck driver, pilot-teacher comparisons...

Does a baby sitter only charge for her time changing diapers, or does he/she charge for the time she is actually spending at the home even when the kid is asleep? (My babysitter is great, does it for free just to gain experience to be a daycare worker someday! j/k!)

[SkyWolfe]

I will get my instructor rating mostly for the fun of learning something new and having another skill.

I got into ATC to pay my bills :}

Wolfie

[Invertago]

Instructors here get $16 hr for billable instruction time, $8 hr for working desk.

In a very nice city (Kelowna), I think that's the problem.......There is also no shortage of instructors here.

What do they charge for dual / pgi at the above mentioned school? Just curious if the students are getting a good deal or the poor instructors?

[cgartly]

Instructors here get $16 hr for billable instruction time, $8 hr for working desk.

In a very nice city (Kelowna), I think that's the problem.......There is also no shortage of instructors here.

What do they charge for dual / pgi at the above mentioned school? Just curious if the students are getting a good deal or the poor instructors?

Its the instructor's that are getting the raw deal. Instructor time is billed at $50.00 an hour whether in the air or on the ground. They also charge a 0.20 one every dual flight for ground briefing irregardless of whether there is any or not.

[C-GGGQ]

hey invertago where do you work and are they hiring

[iflyforpie]

Instructors here get $16 hr for billable instruction time, $8 hr for working desk.

In a very nice city (Kelowna), I think that's the problem.......There is also no shortage of instructors here.

What do they charge for dual / pgi at the above mentioned school? Just curious if the students are getting a good deal or the poor instructors?

Its the instructor's that are getting the raw deal. Instructor time is billed at $50.00 an hour whether in the air or on the ground. They also charge a 0.20 one every dual flight for ground briefing irregardless of whether there is any or not.

F*ck Carson Air!

I can't believe I gave them $7,000 of my hard earned money for a PPL (at least parking was free back then ). The last time I graced their doors was after they charged me $25/day, for a week to park my Sundowner outside while I was wx'd out.

[mcrit]

No need to hold back there Ifly4pie....tell us how you really feel......

[Checkyourtrim]

. . well . . at least he got it out of his system . . .

[nott00shabby]

From what i've heard from a few cfi's, a regular class I & II instructor in a non manger position can make anywhere from $30-$60,000 a year, depending on the size of school and how much your willing to work.

[MichaelP]

Regardless of what should be paid for instructors the money has to come through the door first.

It's a fact that flying is too cheap here in Canada... This is perhaps an unpopular view but it is a fact.
The boss of the flying club here told me that Canada can only be competitive in the world market by paying its instructors below the legal amount under Canada's labour laws and that aviation is a special case in this respect.

I look from the point of view of a Brit perhaps, I paid twice as much to fly there as my brothers paid here in Canada.
Flying should certainly be cheaper in Canada, the expenses in most respects are less except in the cost of maintenance where they should be the same.
Maintenance cost is cheaper by far in Canada and the state of many of the aeroplanes reflects this!

The fact is that ultimately the student has to pay, and since all schools advertise that they comply with TC requirements why would a student go to a school that charges more and pays its instructors well?

We were all student pilots once, scraping our pennies to go and fly...
I gave up my car, took the train and walked six miles (uphill both ways of course), and it cost me more than half my take home pay each week to learn to fly one hour at a time.

I look at the cost of flying here in Canada, and at how much disposable income people have, and today it costs comparatively just as much for local Canadians to learn to fly here as it cost me to learn to fly in England 35 years ago.
In other words, if I worked as an inspector at Centrax (my job in 1973), but in Vancouver for what you would be paid here today I could not afford to learn to fly at CZBB today.
While Canada is cheap for Brits to learn to fly, it is just as expensive for Canadians as learning to fly in England is for Brits!
You're a poor lot here

So there's no answer to instructor pay... I've looked for it, I've tried hard to improve it, but business is a fact of life, and students don't care about quality more than how much it is costing.
If people cared about quality in Canada perhaps Zellers could not exist!

[mcrit]

It's a fact that flying is too cheap here in Canada... This is perhaps an unpopular view but it is a fact.

No, I'd say it's more a case of insurnace companies and lawyers having too much power to a$$ rape those of us that do productive work.

[Stevo226]

200/paycheck plus 28/hour (nothing for groundschool, it's apparently included in base pay )

What about vacation time, sick time, benefits? anybody have any of those beauties?

[gaamin]

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