Cost of Flying Lessons
 

No, not what they are now, we've done that to death. How much did you pay when you first started? I've just been reminiscing and my first flight was in a Rollason Condor from Cranwell Flying Club in 1976. Cost including instruction was £9 per hour....and it had just gone up from £7. Cost of a PPL was around £400.

The flying school I started learning at the time (back in 2003) charged hourly £155 for a TB10 all inclusive, we use to fly from Luton Airport which was very interesting.

Tiger Moth @ Old Sarum - £2-10s an hour in 1967. Going rate at the nearest school was about £6 per hour.

J3 Cub (3 Counties at Blackbushe), 1969. As far as I recall £4 10s solo and £5 10s instructional. My conversion gliding Silver C to PPL(A) licence cost me £37 5s in flying fees, as soon as my brown licence arrived from the friendly CAA I was flying an RF4 at around £4 per hour.

On the other hand, my annual salary was about half my monthly one now.

Good point, I've just done a quick calc and flying is cheaper now for me in terms of percentage net income than it was then.

Tiger Moth from Thruxton in 1947 £1.00/hr

Jet Provost, Syerston, 1964/5. 170 hours and Her Maj paid me £3.50 per flying hour.

Unbelievable bargain!
:cool:

I started flight training in 1976. The Cessna 150 was $18 per hour, and the instructor $22. A 172 or PA 28 was $25. I rapidly saw the wisdom in paying the then thought silly expensive rate of $52 for the Cessna Cardinal RG. A hundred hours in that, so early in my flying career was the best thing I ever did!

Well hyper inflation is OK as long as your salary is hyper inflating too.

Sunderland (Usworth) of blessed memory, 1981, £36/hr on Cessna 150s.

Wiltshire School of Flying (?), Thruxton 1964 £135 (+£2 10/) for a 30 hour intensive PPL, including food and accomodation. On Jackeroos.

South Humberside Flying Club at Kirmington ( now Humberside Airport ) in 1975. Cessna 150 was £11.00 per hour.

£4 5sh (is that how you type it?!!) and at Biggin Hill too!! 1966

£12/hour brakes off to brakes on in 1980 for a Cessna 150 including instructor. But it was a non-profit works' club run with lots of volunteer effort (and a free lease on the company's airfield).

The commercial rate was nearer £30

Stapleford 1970. Rollason Condor £6.50 per hour solo. £8 dual. (Old money then of course)

You will note the jump in prices between the early seventies and the late seventies.

That is because it spans the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, the formation of OPEC, and the resulting surge in fuel costs. I worked in a petrol garage in 1972 and 4 star was 33 pence per gallon and had changed little in the previous decade. Eighteen months later it had tripled in price and it has been climbing ever since.

That's interesting because I was sure my first flight was £15.00 quid an hour, Beagle Pup, late Seventies, with an instructor called Jim Beaton. Great guy.

I was thrown slightly by some posts suggesting 6 quid mid Seventies. Was going to complain tomorrow in case I had been done:\

Up till the mid 60s the government gave some help to GA. A tax on fuel rebate or something? I gave up flying for 20+ years when they stopped it.

Those were the halcyon days. Pre welfare state????

When the welfare state burden increased, and logically the tax burden on the diminishing rest of us who had to fund it increased, then something had to give I suppose.:confused::confused:

Something about stifling enterprise, or did I read that somewhere?

Maoraigh1,

I did the same although it did coincide with kids coming along. I started again when Gordon Brown paid 40% of the training costs through the NVQ scheme.

Because we're British and putting up with crap is what we're good at.

I can't speak for the US, but recently the BBC did a breakdown of auto fuel prices in the UK:

BBC News - The cost of petrol and oil: How it breaks down

I have seen comments that most US housing would become almost worthless if US auto fuel prices rose to typical world levels. Can't see Obama doing it this year...

Talking about fuel, I may have the details wrong here but apparently North Sea oil which is ours we sell to the US because it's high grade stuff, then we buy all the low grade stuff off the Arabs at daft prices.

I'm sometimes at a loss to understand UK economics, like how we nit pick about a miilion here and there for a hospital ward but allow Vodaphone to get away with a six billion pound tax bill. You would think people were taking back handers here and there, perish the thought.

UK Fuel tax rates are here: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget2011/tiin6330.pdf
Then add VAT.

So my maths (Provider = distribution, refining, maintenance, etc):

if the AVGAS price is £2.10 per litre, that means that each litre consists of:

Duty: 37.7p (18% of total)
Provider: £1.373 (65% of total)
VAT (20%): 35p (16% of total)

so HMRC gets 73p per litre.

Comparing to Unleaded petrol at the BBC's £1.34 per litre:
Duty: 58p (43% of total)
Provider: 54p (40% of total)
VAT (20%): 22p (17% of total)

HMRC gets 80p per litre

Actually not that much in it.

I'm not sure how to link to a pdf, but the June 2010 IAOPA has an article:
"Getting the Lead out" (pages 38-39)
You should be able to google it.

It says only two avgas refineries are left in Europe, and neither is in the UK.
Perhaps the lack of competition, and transport costs, are factors here.

I don't know what my linking problem was earlier, but this link seems to work now:
http://www.iaopa.eu/mediaServlet/sto...n10/p38-39.pdf