Night Rating ACTUAL cost!

[mattycourt]

Dear All,

I hope you are well.
I have just recently passed my PPL and I am now looking to undertake my Night Rating. My question is;

How much did you Night Rating actually cost?

The reason I ask;

I undertook my PPL with a school at Biggin Hill (very good outfit) however, landing fees are approx. £23 for a PA28. With the required 5 hours and 5 full stop landings, I am looking at 10 sets of landing fees on top of the advertised price of £892. There is also a fuel surcharge of approx. £10 per hour. The £892 price includes instructor, fuel, aircraft and the necessary ground tuition required but do not include membership or Joining Fee (unless current Member) and fuel surcharges. So, with this in mind, I am looking at a price of approx. £1172 and thats if I complete in minimum time.
I also have another concern, the school uses a system of adding .3 to the time from take off to landing for billing and logging purposes. Over 5 hours this is an extra 1.5 hours and the rate for a PA28 is £230 an hour night! This could mean an extra charge of £345 on top of the £1172 which totals at £1517!!
I have spoken to the ops team in regards to the .3 and the response I got was that some instructors will make the lesson a .7 and then add the .3 to make 1 hour which if this is the case, the rating will be around £1172.
Please could you voice your opinions on the above. I may have gotten the complete wrong end of the stick and if I have, I apologise!
Thank you very much in anticipation.

[mcgoo]

I completed my night qualification within my PPL so it only really cost me the issue fee, however the price you have quoted seems expensive, near me at Leicestershire aero club, they quote between £606 and £650 depending on whether you pay up front or not.

[Halfbaked_Boy]

Total time for me to complete the Night Qualification was 4 hrs 55 mins dual, and 1 hr P1 to complete the 5 TOs and LDGs.

This equated to a cost (at £94 per hour solo and £125 dual on a C152) of £709. I seem to remember it cost around £80 to have the qualification endorsed on my licence, so all in all, it cost me around £800 in total.

Although I assume your figure is based on 5 hrs total, i.e. completing in minimum time. Had I done the lot in 5 hrs, the total cost would have been around £700.

There are no landing/T+G fees for based aircraft where I was flying from.

My initial reaction to your calculations is - that's expensive! Although Biggin Hill (and in fact all the London aeroclubs) is bound to be more costly - my training was undertaken at a smaller, close knit community type of airfield in rural East Anglia!

I hope this helps - it may be well worth looking around and accepting a longer drive to the airfield.

All the best. :ok:

[Madder]

Sounds slightly expensive though not entirely madness. If you don't like the price, find something else. Then again, Im in Denmark and here everything is more expensive.
The 0.3 system you refer to sounds like some silly sort of "calculating" block time.

[ford cortina]

Sounds expensive, if you get a FAA PPL you get a night rating at no extra cost.:ok:

[XXPLOD]

If it's not too far, consider Western Air at Thruxton. Night flying starts next week and their glass cockpit PA28 is about £160ph for night instruction. No additional landing fees at all.

And of course you have to pay the CAA £86 to add: "The privileges of this licence may be excercised at night."

[downwind24]

Im currently at Bonus Cranfield for the CPL/IR, im sure their night rating is nowhere near that amount and its a full ATC airfield with good aircraft. May be worth a try ! I did mine in my group 172 and £25 p/h in the instructors pocket ,meant a night rating for appx £500 , then as the above post the wording adding at the ridiculous cost of £86

[mattycourt]

Thank you all for your replies!
I have started to shop around and have a couple of options lined up that are cheaper.
Looking forward to getting it done and flying around in the dark!

Regards