Rates Of Pay
 

I've been instructing forever, PPL & CPL, but I'm completely out of touch with what my fellow instructors are earning throughout the UK. It's the PPL flying club/school side of the industry that I'm interested in. I'm not looking for a job, but I do want to know if I've been left behind when it comes to rates of pay. I've been working for my current employer since 2004.
To get the ball rolling I'm on £18/hour flying, £10/hour ground school, and a retainer of £25/day. I seem to average approximately £20000/year.
Sorry if this has been asked before, or it's considered inappropriate, but I'm genuinely interested.
Thank you.

Its a few years since I last worked full time as an instructor. But 15 to 20 pound an hour flight pay is quite typical. If you are getting a retainer then that is a bonus alot of ppl schools will pay flight pay only.

However I would of thought for CPL instructing you should be getting better flight pay may be 30/35 per hour.

With the retainer included that seems a pretty reasonable rate for PPL instructing, but as said you'd expect £30/hr for CPL instructing.

I am suprised anyone does it if the rates of pay are as poor as this. A driving instructor would get paid more - all credit to ppl instructors for having the enthusiasm to train people like me and be so professional about it. Is it the rates charged by the schools which are too low or the % they take?

Poor! the rates quoted above are well above what some schools pay; figures between £10 and £15 seem to be closer to the norm for PPL instruction.

For PPL instruction, £15 per flying hour is about right. Although i've seen rates as low as £7.50 per hour for restricted FI's. The CPL FI's I know are getting anything from £15 to £25 per hour. Retainers can vary quite considerably.

My instructor charges me £30 p/h.. robbing :mad:

Oh well! ;)

Thank you for all of your replies.
ChasG's is my favourite for obvious reasons.
I've been instructing full-time since 1994 and take it very seriously. It always saddens me when I see that some people think that it's perfectly OK for PPL instructors to paid by the hour at rates of £10-15/hour. I guess that you get what you pay for.

Esperanza - in this case as a student I would say I get from my instructor a lot more than £15 worth of tuition in an hour. I find it unbelievable that the rates are so low. Its a disgrace.
Makes me wonder about the ecomomics of buying a share in a plane and then paying privately for lessons.

I am a restricted FI working in Southeast England, PPL training. I get £20 per hour. Unrestricted instructors get a little more.

Dobbin 1
Is this with or without a retainer. Hopefully with. If not, then you should have one. Thanks for the reply.

No retainer. I am happy with the arrangement.

Well that's OK then. Keeping busy? I've flown 70 hours (well including solos) this month.

That's a lot.

I only work part time - 4/7. I did 32 hours last month.

O.P. -

I would say for ppl that's pretty good pay. For cpl it's pretty poor.

Here's my thoughts on it.

The problem is that aviiation is, at least to begin with, something that most people get into out of a love for flying. The ultimate, "I can make what I love, what I do".

As such there are always many many applicants for every job and to make matters worse the intstructors job is used by many as a way to build hours for "free" so that they can apply for a better paying career level job with an airline etc.

As such the economics are stacked in favour of the employer because;

1. There are many more wannabe's than jobs
2. Many of those see the pay as substantially topped up by the free hours for which otherwise they would have to pay a hundred ish pounds an hour for. So th next genration of pilots pass CPL on minimum hours get an instructors rating and teach the next batch etc etc.

The unitended consequence of course is that our next generation of pilots get trained by some of the least experienced and I can't help wondering how much accident rates for low hours pilots would come down if the new were taught by the old, as it were.

Of course we could change this by paying more for our flying, but most training PPL's look for the lowest rate possible, which of course misses the point on many levels. This is exactly what I did many years ago and of course you don't know why or by how much you miss the point till later!

Personally I think flight training is some of the best value "buys" in the world. By the truly great bargain is to go to somewhere like Ultimate High at Kemble (for fixed wing) or old leon Smith at Wycombe and get the benefit of huge ammounts of experience and talent for a hardly noticable increase from the lowest common denominator.

My 2 pence worth, go for an "expert shop" (I have no affiliation with those mentioned, other than being a very happy customer) and rejoyce in the value offered (unless of course you are a flight instructor!).

That option will, of course, not be available after next April when all flight training will have to be done at an Approved Training Organisation.

I initially loved GeneralSpecifics reply until I got down to the bit about accident rates!!!

I admit that I am a relatively new de-restricted instructor with only 250 hours ppl instruction but have often been told that my instruction (not me personally but new FIs) is often better than the old guys because we are more up to date with the syllabus and more passionate and enthusiastic about it. There is absolutely no correlation or studies to suggest that the old guys have less accidents than us!! I have just graduated with an MSc in Air Transport Management from Cranfield University but may be wrong.

Secondly, the bit when you say go to leading school that charge more because they have better instruction...haha what a joke! I used to instruct for one of the leading providers, and then get in my car at weekends and drive round the other side of the field to instruct for a different school (supposedly a lower standard of school) really? same instructor!! It's not like I omit vital parts of the syllabus when teaching there as apose to the "leading school"!

Think before you write

Christian,
Whilst there may be new instructors that are I would doubt it is that many, as lots of them are instructing to gain the hours before moving on, rather than being keen to instruct, any older instructors ARE there because they want to do it! Whilst not ALWAYS the case, they are still enthusiastic and up to date with the Syllabus (which IMHO has not changed that much). What they do have that a newer instructor does not is a LOT more experience in both flying aircraft and knowing how to put things over to students, especially those having difficulties.
I would agree that the more expensive schools are not always those with the best instructors, but they do not all have YOU as an instructor, and on balance it will often be true.

Foxmoth,

Completely agree with you but this is why I said that I am frequently told by students that OFTEN younger instructors are more enthusiastic and they prefer their younger approach. NOT ALWAYS!!! Also I competely agree that the older guys can have more experience..equally some have drifted through their 20,000+ hours without a single incident. I also agree that a lot of the younger guys are just hour building, I happen to love instructing. The main thesis of my argument was that there is no correlation between a lower accident rate from older instructors, as professed by the other guy. Perhaps I should have added that the opposite is true also! Is that better?