Breaking down the hourly costs...

[Lew747]

Hi all,


I wanted to post this to get an idea of what the price of a typical flying lesson at the average club is broken down into. I would hazard a guess the majority of PPL students are paying circa £130/hour?

Could someone please tell me what the costs break down into, i.e. fuel, flight instructor rate, maintenance etc. I would really like to find out why it is so expensive and why clubs are making students pay such high prices. (Exclude the 'high cost of fuel' because even 10 years ago it was still around £100/hr for a typical flying lesson!)

Cheers!

Lewis :ok:

[rich_g85]

I pay £165/hr for dual PA-28 instruction. No idea how that breaks down, sorry!

[JUST-local]

In a typical trainer Piper/ Cessna etc. you would be shocked at the costs.

At £130/hr they will be making very little money and may be even losing a bit.

Have a guess yourself at the following, I could put some figures in but of course they will vary.

Fuel.
Insurance. (aircraft/ organisation)
Aircraft Capital/ Finance.
Training Approvals.
Training Facilities.
Aircraft maintenance/ upkeep/ lifed items/ components.
Administration Staff.
Instructor. (CFI / HOT)

Yes, definatley not a money making exercise. Most do it as a lifestyle choice.:D

[wsmempson]

Take a Piper warrior as an example;

32 litres per hour for fuel = £50ph
cost of a/c (hangerage, maintenance etc) £50
instructor £20
engine fund £5

On £130 ph cost, that gives a profit of £5ph. On £160, that gives £35ph.

Hardly a Kings ransome - and not nearly as lucrative as politics....

And no, I don't own a flying school.:)

[dont overfil]

You need to take the VAT off first. Divide by 1.15. At £130 an hour the club gets only £113.04 Minus what everyone else says.

Inverness went bust at £109 ph.

DO.

[flyingtincan]

When I trained near London it broke down as (per taco hour)
aeroplane £75
fuel £35
instructor £20 (and that was virtualy free instruction)
landing £15 mon to thur- more on fri to sun
ALL PLUS VAT

That equals £170 per taco hour - a one clock hour lesson mid-week usualy came out at 0.8 to 0.9 taco hours.
Lessons with lots of high power use (i.e repeated climbing for stall practise) would come out at 1.0 taco.
Touch and goes were extra at about £8 each plus VAT- although the taco would be about 0.7 for a T&G lesson.
On a bad day ther would be 0.2 taco before even getting off the ground.
They never said flying was cheap - but this was about as cheap as you could get (near London)

[IO540]

You guys need to break down fixed costs (e.g. insurance) from variable/direct costs (e.g. fuel, 50hr checks, etc).

Then you will see that the business case hangs heavily on the utilisation of the asset.

In the UK, utilitisation tends to be poor - due to poor weather much of the year, poor business organisation at many schools, freelance instructors not turning up, poor aircraft condition resulting in a lot of downtime, the school being unwilling to fix each defect and instead waiting for them to accumulate, etc.

I did my IR in Arizona where the PA28-161s were flying 500-1000 hours/year. They were flying so much that the maintenance was done evenings/night, and the bowser would drive around then too. At that level of utilitisation, they could scrap those planes every year or two and still be quids in.

The variable costs can vary a lot too. If you have a uniform-type fleet and have an in-house engineering business, your maintenance is much cheaper because you are not paying somebody else's profits and also you can buy parts in bulk from the USA.

[JUST-local]

"You guys need to break down fixed costs (e.g. insurance) from variable/direct costs (e.g. fuel, 50hr checks, etc)."

WHY? this all has to be paid for by the customer or else there will be no school.

"500-1000 hours/year.
At that level of utilitisation, they could scrap those planes every year or two and still be quids in."

Unlikley they were scrapped! There are lots of school in the uk that put 500 plus hour a year on the planes. The ones that are putting much less than 300 hundered on will be supporting their hobby or going bust.

There are a few good clean light aircraft flying around with 20000 hours on them. Not sure why high ustilisation means an aircraft would be scrapped.
You can make one like new for a lot less than a new one. :ok:

[IO540]

What I was getting at is that asking a blanket question re costs is not very useful, because utilitisation varies from school to school.

Not many UK schools do 500hrs/year across their fleet.

Those that fly a lot will be making more money.

[JW411]

I have a well-equipped PA-28 Warrior which I lease out when I am not using it. I have been doing this for 5 years now and charge £99 per hour (before VAT and not including landing fees). I have yet to make a profit.

Because I lease the aircraft, it has to be on a "Public Transport" ARC (C of A).

That means that the fixed costs (maintenace, parking & insurance) come to something around £10,000 pa.

Anyone out there who thinks you can make a killing out of leasing such a simple aircraft should go out and buy one tomorrow!

[PAPI-74]

Broken door trims
Bald tyres from locked brakes
Paint job after hitting a fence
Broken seat adjustment handle
Headset loaners
Split nose oleo seal after a heavy landing
Replacement throttle after bending from said heavy landing
Box failure
Txpdr failure
Vacume pump replacement

You name it - it brakes on the trainers - and it costs a fortune to replace.
:eek::ouch:
Look after them!!!!!!

[JW411]

I even ended up with a total bill of £380 because "the left seat-belt spring-loaded reel failed to retract as required".

The very same belt would have cost less than £50 in Halfords but Halfords are not EASA-approved.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

In the UK, utilitisation tends to be poor - due to poor weather much of the year, poor business organisation at many schools, freelance instructors not turning up, poor aircraft condition resulting in a lot of downtime, the school being unwilling to fix each defect and instead waiting for them to accumulate, etc.
And on account of lots of UK renters and students have jobs, or else they couldn't afford the flying, which means that in order to have enough aircraft available at weekends that the punters don't get pissed off and go elsewhere most of the hardware is sitting on the ground earning nothing on weekdays.

[Molesworth 1]

You guys need to break down fixed costs (e.g. insurance) from variable/direct costs (e.g. fuel, 50hr checks, etc).


Every cost accountant would agree with you! Lumping all the costs together is inaccurate. £50 per hour for hangerage etc? If the plane only flies once a week - maybe.

There are a lot of a/c sitting around on the ground doing nothing. If you are student your flight gets cancelled due to weather (mostly) or perhaps non availability of an instructor. PPL hire gets cancelled by the weather (not that one even has to book). Very rare because of non-availability of aircraft.

[Tinstaafl]

Justlocal, you have to separate overhead costs from operating costs to find the true cost of operating the aircraft - which will vary depending on how many hours it flies per year. The more the a/c flies the cheaper its per hourly cost becomes.

Operating costs per hour are what it costs you as the a/c flies eg fuel, oil, crew (if paid hourly), any maintenance periods that will be flown out of hours before any due date arrives (if the due date is expected to arrive but only partially flown out, the cost per hour for that item will increase), engine & prop reserve (overhaul/replacement cost / TBO) and the like. These sort of items are a relatively fixed cost per hour of use, ignoring inflation during the period. A reserve % for unanticipated events can be included here too.

Overhead costs are those costs that will fall due whether or not the a/c flies. Things like hangarage, insurance, crew costs (if salary), any maintenance that will fall due during a period of disuse, any other yearly costs and the like. Even administration costs. In the US you would include a Customs sticker per year if you intended to take the aircraft fly internationally.

It's also possible to have another category: Variable costs ie those costs that don't happen on a schedule, and may or may not occur on a flight eg landing fees, ATC fees, approach fees, catering, etc. Some people average these out over a year to make calculation simple by including the amounts as Overhead. Others treat them as add-on costs that get considered on a per flight basis.

It's the Overhead Costs that mostly lead to a variable total cost to fly your aircraft / hour but Variable Costs also make a difference. The more the a/c flies the more hours across which those overhead costs can be amortised.

[gyrotyro]

WSmempson

"32 litres per hour for fuel = £50ph
cost of a/c (hangerage, maintenance etc) £50
instructor £20
engine fund £5

On £130 ph cost, that gives a profit of £5ph. On £160, that gives £35ph."

I don't think that trying to include £50 an hour for hangar cost and maintainence is viable.

How much is the annual hangar cost and how much is the annual cost of servicing ? Divide these by the total number of hours flown per year for a realistic figure.

[IO540]

The post above touches on the real issue.

Each flight of the plane makes a certain contribution to the school's fixed costs.

Let's say the direct operating cost is £50/hr, the instructor (self employed for simplicity) gets £20/hr, and the lesson is charged at £90/hr.

Each hour that plane is up, contributes £20/hr to the school's fixed costs.

Case 1: the plane does 300hrs/year - contribution is £6000

Case 2: the plane does 600hrs/year - contribution is £12000

Let's say the school has 5 of them.

Let's assume the fixed costs of the whole setup are £25000, then in Case 1 the school makes a net profit of £5000.

In Case 2 the school makes a net profit of £35000 - 7 times bigger despite the asset utilisation being just 2x bigger.

The DOC (direct operating cost) of a typical training spamcan is way under £100/hr, so if you have a fleet of them and keep it in the air a lot, you will make loads of money - so long as you control the fixed costs.

One stupid thing is the lack of training of using the red lever - you can knock 30% off your fuel bill using correct leaning.

[wsmempson]

"WSmempson

"32 litres per hour for fuel = £50ph
cost of a/c (hangerage, maintenance etc) £50
instructor £20
engine fund £5

On £130 ph cost, that gives a profit of £5ph. On £160, that gives £35ph."

I don't think that trying to include £50 an hour for hangar cost and maintainence is viable.

How much is the annual hangar cost and how much is the annual cost of servicing ? Divide these by the total number of hours flown per year for a realistic figure."

Thank you, GyroTyro

I'm just giving the figures from the Arrow III that I own and run and fly for 200hrs per year, rather than giving you figures that are plucked out of the air simply to suit my point of view. I have excluded the costs of the VP prop and the undercarriage although, IMHE, this does not cost a huge amount more to run if you land in a sensible manner....

Clearly, if you double the useage, you will reduce the hourly cost of the hangarage, but you will get more 50hr checks, 150hr checks and airframe part wear. Hence the £50ph figure for hanarage and maintenance may reduce to £40ph (as opposed to £25ph as might seem likely).

However, the long and the short of it is that in today's world, a C of A aircraft is expensive to run, and there isn't a huge fortune to made renting them out at the figures typically charged by a flying school.

[silverelise]

If you class £130 per hour as "expensive" I would respectfully suggest you choose a different hobby. And definitely don't look at helicopters. :p

[wsmempson]

This is a theme which seems to come up every 2 or 3 months, so I've take the liberty of posting my answer from the last thread, in order to expand on the theme a bit.

"Some typical ownership figures based on something like a pa28/172 etc on a C of A, flown for 100 hrs P/A, kept outside (don't even ask about hangerage) in the SE of England, are as follows:

Parking (£200 pcm) £2,400 P/A (hangerage £450pcm or £5,400pa!)
Insurance £1,500 P/A
Maintenance (1 x annual) £3,000
(1 x 50 hr check) £400
Engine fund (£7.50ph X 100hrs) £750
fuel (£1.50pl x 35 x 100) £5,250

Total £12,900 P/A

Which equals £129.00 ph!

However, if you fly 200hrs P/A, the sum is more like this:

Parking (£200 pcm) £2,400 P/A
Insurance £1,500 P/A
Maintenance (1 x annual) £3,000
(3 x 50 hr check) £1,200
Engine fund (£7.50ph X 200hrs) £1,500
fuel (£1.50pl x 35 x 200) £10,500

Total £20,100 P/A

Which equals £100.50 P/H!

Clearly there is an economy of scale to be had, whereby the more you fly, the cheaper it gets on an hourly basis. I have also ignored the cost of capital, as the cost/benefit breakdown of buying something new(expensive, but small bills) verses something old(cheap, but with big maintenance bills) is a matter of personal choice. However, you will have to decide if flying around in a 'shed' is something you are prepared to do, and also whether you are happy with regular periods of downtime as a result.

These figures are ball park figures based on a C of A A/C, maintained to the easa version of a public transport C of A, and also assumes that you dont bend it and nothing goes wrong with the avionics or paint or airframe....etc."

Have a go with fiddling with these figures and then factor in the abuse that a rental machine gets from flying school use and occasional renters, which will result in the odd big bill; I wouldn't do it!

[JUST-local]

The first post was breaking down the hourly costs.....

All I was pointing out was that all the fixed costs of the school must be covered in the hourley rates, if they are low the aircraft costs may be covered but the school/s club/s are left short.

They could/can also charge a membership/subs but people tend to moan about this as well as the hourley rate being high.

I have found a few places who offer good value for money and it is unlikeley they are making profit from my small contribution.
I have also flown or attempeted to fly at a couple of places who realise this and treat the cusomers poorley, I would rather they put the prices up and improved the service.

Aircraft utilisation, Yes the more you use it the cheaper it becomes. (as has already been done but can be a problem in the UK with WX etc.)

Fixed costs, Fixed but are still lurking in the background and must be paid by the customer :ok:

[Lew747]

I can fully understand why clubs are going out of business.

On a weekday down my club there may be only one or two flights a day! Typically in the form of a flying or trial lesson. It baffles me how the place can stay alive, considering there is always 2 ops staff on hand who's wages need to be paid! :bored:


And then as soon as the weather turns bad, boom, a whole day with zero turnover! :{

[Skylark58]

I wanted to post this to get an idea of what the price of a typical flying lesson at the average club is broken down into. I would hazard a guess the majority of PPL students are paying circa £130/hour?

Could someone please tell me what the costs break down into, i.e. fuel, flight instructor rate, maintenance etc. I would really like to find out why it is so expensiveWell when I learned to fly in 1974, I was paying £10.50 an hour and my take home salary was £42 a month. A weeks wages per hour. So £130 an hour is quite cheap in comparison