How quickly would I go broke...

[You want it when?]

Mr Redundancy has finally caught me, and the clots have made enough mistakes in the process that I should be able to extract a reasonable sum of money out of them.

How much? Enough to buy a mid 70's C-152 with a couple of thousand hours on the engine, and have enough money left over to fight the bank to a standstill for quite a few months.

Me - I'm a scardy cat failed PPL with a love of flight.

Can anyone expand upon the economics of running a flight school? And of running a suitable two or four seat for the year. Cranfield is where I was training until I scared myself silly, but I would consider basing it out of other strips in the area.

So in a nutshell...

What sort of salary would an instructor be looking for?
What sort of insurance and running costs should I think about - I did the sums when I wasn't scared and got £6K + fuel, per annum for 100 or so hours.
Should I just get back in my box?

Any replies accepted. Merci (or Mercy maybe :O )

[smallpilot]

Want to make a million in GA? Start with 2 million and buy a flying school! Sorry tobe negative but its probably a fair comment!

[You want it when?]

LOL - I expected that. OK moving on, some non JetBlast answers please.

[BEagle]

Don't forget that any 'flight school' Cessna (or anything else) will have to be on a Public Transport C of A - so if it already has 'a couple of thousand hours' on the engine, you'll have to fork out around £16k for an engine change at 2400 hours TT on the engine......

If you're serious, buy something with a zero time engine - and get the vendor's maintenance organisation to complete the annual before you buy!

[Mr Magoo]

I trust this is some kind of windup...otherwise you're totally bonkers pal! Admittedly the majority of flying school owners are, seemingly, Saddam clones or escapees from the local nut hatch but you'd be better off getting your redundancy in cash, dousing it with 100LL and setting light to it. A much faster and less hassle filled way to get rid of the money. You may delude yourself that I'm taking the p*ss - trust me, I'm a flying instructor and I'm not :ok:

[tacpot]

How about sinking your money into a new aircraft and leasing the aircraft to a flying club, this would allow you enter the business with much less risk than most options. You can get started straight away, while collecting the costs for your idea to branch out as an indepenent school. You will have an aircraft that you will own a greater precentage of, and being newish will be an asset to your school.

Diamond Aircraft have a set of spreadsheets for a lease-back arrangement on their DiamondStar DA40TDI aircraft at http://www.diamondair.co.uk/starter2.html

These spreadsheets give you some idea of the costs involved in runnning the aircraft. The interest rate they use can possibly be bettered as well.