How much does a flying instructor earn?

[Dynamite95]

Hi all

I was wondering how much a flying instructor might expect to earn? To clarify, I'm talking about an instructor in a Cessna 150 or similar.

It's a vague question I know, but a rough ball park figure would still be very helpful.

Thanks in advance

[MIKECR]

Varies greatly, depending on many factors - how busy the flying school is, how many students you get, availibility of aircraft, whether your restricted/unrestricted, weather.....the list go's on. At my local FTO, the full time PPL instructors are reasonably busy just now, plenty students, and the weather is playing ball. I beleive theyre doing around 60 to 70 hours per month at £20 per hour(unrestricted) before tax. During winter they didnt fly as the weather was gash.

It can of course vary wildly(hours/pay) from place to place. Some schools pay their instructors a monthly retainer as well as an hourly rate.....and some dont.

Your never going to get rich as a PPL instructor. As an Instrument rating instructor then things are different. One can negotiate a half reasonable salary then. But as the typical flying club FI teaching Bloggs to pole a 152 round the sky without killing himself(or you!), your basically paid sweeties!

[Dynamite95]

Thanks very much for the quick answer, much appreciated

[welliewanger]

£20 / hour is about right. That's per FLYING hour. So max is about 4 hrs/day. I worked for 4 months at a grass strip (summer) and about 12 months at a fully equipped tarmac runway airport. In that time I did nearly 600 hours. So I got around 450 hours / year working almost 7 days a week whenever the weather permitted. That's £9k per year. As said before, you earn virtually nothing. But it's worth it IMHO - loved every minute of it!

[EK4457]

Roughly £20 per flying hour is the going rate. It is very difficult to get a retainer or salary these days.

Part time hours can vary wildly but I can do about 100 hours a year along side a full time job.

As for full time, welliewanger is spot on. I know people who have virtually lived at the airfield 24/7 and got just over 400 hours. That's an insulting £8,000 per year.

Clearly, if you have any significant commitments (family, mortgage, training loan etc) then full time instructing is unlikely to be a suitable career on its own.

I call it the instructing paradox; the only real option you have after gaining the fATPL is to become an instructor. However, this is another £7,000 loan for most. There is no way part-time instructing will cover the loan payments and full time instruction isn't even a consideration.

The sad fact of the matter is that the FI rating will loose you money for years to come, even after future earnings are taken into account. And loosing money is exactly what fresh fATPLers are not in a position to do.

[captainsuperstorm]

the main problems are:

1-low pay, how long can you live with 1000 euro or less?
2-where do you go after? chief pilot paid 1200 euro?
3-how do you make the t/r + 500h on type if you want go in an airline
4-general aviation, still need 500h and t/r

nice to fly for 1 year, but believe me, I know plenty of FI, they all gave up.

[trebor_hub]

It varies from school to school. £12-30 (£20 Average)
Instructors are paid per 'flying hour'. Usually you should be able to get around 4 1.5hr flights a day

[Luke SkyToddler]

You wouldn't want to budget on anything more than £500 / month in the winter and £1000 / month in the summer

[vdaff]

Got a friend back in US who is working as a flight instructor..
he is getting 22 dollars per hr, i heard truck drivers in the US earns more than that

[vetflyer]

Not nearly enough

Is the short answer

[Luke SkyToddler]

However, actually getting paid £15 / hour still beats the hell out of the current trend of spending £30 grand to spend a few weeks sitting in the RHS of a battered old Indonesian 737

[punk666]

LST.....spending those few weeks in a 'battered indonesian 737' will end up giving you 500 hours on type which will open more doors than 500 hours in a c152

[Poeli]

and not to forget: debts

[zondaracer]

I saw some jobs awhile back at Lufthansa and Oxford in Arizona starting at $30000 per year, and a lot of Chief instructor jobs are salaried vs hourly, but these are the exception.