My memory is failing fast.....I am certain that in 1963/4 we paid £3.50 per month (fixed) to the Club, and about the same per hour for the use of an Auster Autocrat or a little 2-seat Jodel, and a little bit more for a 4-seat Piper Caribbean. Those payments covered all costs including fuel but excluding landing fees etc away from base. Dual instruction did not cost any more; all instructors were volunteers, many ex-RAF, who did it for enjoyment. It was a Club, not a School, and all the better for it.
My net Army pay at the time was about £1,200 a year, and they gave me accommodation and 3 good meals a day. I see that I averaged about 7 hours a month, so I was spending about 1/3rd of my salary on flying. (And at least 1/2 of it in pubs and on a series of old bangers).
Nowadays, I have heard that a Lieutenant gets about £35,000 a year, but has to pay for food and accommodation; let's guess that costs £5K/year. So if he/she did what I did, same flying time, for 1/3rd of his/her remaining salary after food/accommodation costs, he/she would spend £10,000 on 84 hours, ie £119 per hour. I suspect that this is roughly what it does cost for a club trainer or runabout flown as P1, so club flying costs seem to have kept pace with Army pay rises at least, and probably the CoL Index as well.
(Note: Old bangers were cars, not girlfriends....the girls had to buy their own beer, I was skint.)
Note 2: Yes, yes, I know it was £3 10s 0d. But for the sake of the less abled I thought I would call it £3.50. And I can't actually remember how to write it in £sd. Did I get it right?
Last edited by Capot; 21st Sep 2015 at 09:26.