Is a $450 PPL checkride normal?
 

Hi,

The guy my instructor is recommending costs $450 for the checkride. Is this normal?

Seems like a really good business to get into lol

Thanks

Don't know about it being a licence to print money. At best a DPE can do one checkride per day. In practice there just aren't that many to be done. I would not want to try to make a living as a DPE (though people do, along with some instruction).

It's just like flight instructing. Round here most instructors charge $60-80/hr. Not bad - IF you can get 40 hrs/week of instruction. But you can't. I don't know how many billable hours per week a full-time instructor gets, but I'd imagine that even 20 would be unusual.

I live in upstate NY, I paid $400 for both my instrument & commercial checkrides. So, $450 for private seems higher, but not out of the ballpark.

-- IFMU

Depends on where you do your checkride. In South Florida, one can expect to pay ~$500 per checkride. It's also quite possible to make a small fortune as a DPE, as you can normally do 2 checkrides per day.

I know a guy who's all but quit his day job, because as a DPE, his income exceeds that of the your typical widebody major airline captain- and he never has to do an overnight.

Sweet gig!

Thanks guys. Yea i think theres a lot of flight schoools around here so supply and demand is..

Sucks

Give DPE's a break !
 

+1 on that. Getting two check rides a day is rare. Also, DPE's are (like flight instructors) often on standby because of weather, so that (s)he gets one check-ride for two days on standby :(

And, like flight instruction, DPE's appear to be more expensive in CA, FL and NY.
In the North-Central region, check rides are more in the $250-$350 ball park.

As Silvaire already remarked, $100/hour for a DPE is not exaggerated. But it must be enjoyable, because you get to teach from a privileged position to very motivated students. :)

European prices are much higher than these, a thousand euros or more. America is cheap :)

Yes, Serge, but Tom is a bit of a special case as the single designated FAA DPE for Europe. The two considerations there are :
- Tom has to make a living out of it
- Tom sets his fee taking into account that the alternative of his applicants is taking a trip to the US (in Economics we call this monopolist pricing).

I personally think that Toms price setting is not ideal, and that by lowering his fee he would attract not only more customers, but also increase his overall revenue. Quite a few candidates still prefer to go to the US, because it provides them with an additional opportunity to build (twin) hours at a much lower rate.

Saint-Charles Flying Service (Saint-Charles, MO)*, for instance, rents out a Duchess for around $250/hour wet to qualified pilots. Which compares to prices of €500+/hour dry that you pay in Europe (if you can find one).

*MODS: No advertisement intended, many other flight schools in the North-Central region will rent out their planes to checked-out and insurance qualified pilots, when they are not used for instruction. Interested readers are encouraged to do some Google searches combined with the AOPA member services (Airport information in the flight planning section also contains listings of FBO's / Flight Schools)

And the two examiners I know in the greater St. Louis area charge $250 and $300 respectively for a check ride.

Yo. Mine was a fixed amount of $300 charged on top of the dual rate. My checkride took slightly less than 1½ hours if I remember correctly.

$ 300 + dual rate ?
 

A quick question : How can a check ride (at least an FAA check ride given by a DPE) be based on a "dual" rental? After all, you are pilot in command and the guy sitting next to you is not instructing. Or is this at a part 141 school where one of the examiners is resident ?

Now with dual instruction rates around $40-50, you are looking at at $ 375 price tag then ? Is that in the Sun State ?