Wbryce
Sorry it took a while to come back to you with the figures. I have been a bit busy.
I have removed from the spreadsheet all costs arising that fall under the category of ‘loss of income’ and also all the money that I have spent on gliding (I was a member of a gliding club for a year and the spreadsheet records all the money that I spend on flying).
The total cost to date without loss of income is £55,146.48, which to be honest surprised even me. I had no idea that I had factored in that much due to income loss.
Of those costs £41,938.82 are what I consider to be ‘direct costs’ and the remaining £13,207.66 are indirect costs such as travel and accommodation costs, books and equipment, landing fees, CAA charges, stationary and so on.
I completely accept that it is possible to do the course for less, for example savings can of course be made by doing some training in the states. I would have saved a significant sum by doing a ‘three week’ PPL in the US but when I started learning to fly all I could afford was an hour every three weeks and the PPL took me a couple of years to finish. All my flying has been done in the UK. This may not be the cheapest approach but it was the one that fit my circumstances.
A number of people have suggested that I have paid over the odds for some of my training. I do not really believe that this is the case and I think misses the point I was trying to make, which is that the ‘additional costs’ mount up and should be considered by people who are thinking about undertaking the training.