Fast, good, cheap
As a U.S. flight school owner, here are some recommendations to keeping costs down while learning to fly:
- Find out if you will have the same CFI from start to finish. Often, schools have the "instructor of the day", and you end up taking longer while each of them determines where you are in your course.
- Find out the experience level of your CFI. Often, schools hire "255 hour wonders" who have no real interest in instructing except to build time, because they can pay very little to hire them. You are not their first priority. Get a CFI that teaches because he or she wants to teach, and has significant experience.
- Take the written test before you start flying.
- Have your medical done before you get here.
- Coordinate TSA approval with the school you intend to fly with so you are approved when you arrive.
- Spend lots of time in a simulator practicing maneuvers (steep turns, stalls, ground reference maneuvers, takeoffs & landings, etc.). This minimizes your flying hours ($$) while training.
- Be fully funded when you arrive
- Plan on flying twice a day. You could solo in a week to 10 days, then complete your PPL in another week to 10 days. You won't be able to fly six times a day...your brain needs downtime to absorb the experience.
Be careful about "cheap". Here's what cheap means to many flight schools:
- No insurance
- Poor maintenance (sure the FAA regulates, but they don't see everything that happens in the field)
- Low per-hour rate, but high total hours to finish. No sense saving $10/hr if it takes three times as many hours to finish. I call this "milking", and it does happen by less-than-reputable schools.
Tim