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CFI pay is very different than what it was. You guys are geezers. It's completely changed from the days of making mid 20s as a CFI. More like $40k. Some places are giving bonuses even at that level. Paying for your CFII and MEI. No more fly one hour sit 3 hours. Schedules are full. I did 960 hours my year instructing, this was at a pilot mill school a decade ago (I made mid 30's adjusting for inflation, back then even). If you want to work in BFW in the NE don't expect to make a lot of money. MOVE.
Live cheap and pay back your $50k in loans within a few years. It's easily done. Don't go off having three kids as a first year regional pilot. Be smart. Enjoy the rest of your life and career. I was just a regular line pilot at the regional level and even I had multiple offers from the majors.
Will some people pay more to learn to fly? Yes of course. If you study and have some semblance of natural ability it's easily done. I knew someone who finally got their PPL at 250 hours. Of course they will say it cost a fortune to learn to fly.
If a child of a friend ever asked my what they should study to get a good job without a college education I would recommend joining a trade union apprentice program and taking basic business management and accounting at a local college. Then plan on eventually operating a business in that field. I would highly recommend a career in something that cannot be moved overseas.
FWIW - I took enough flying lessons in the early '80's that I wasn't a complete hazard and enjoyed it a lot. But then I ran out of money as my employer closed down and so did my industry.
LOL ... this "geezer" has been watching the flight lines at our area flight training schools where I've referred friends to learn to fly, and/or visiting with friends who either:
1) own lease-back planes at flight schools, or
2) are small flight school operations with a few lease-back planes for instruction or outside rentals
so I have a pretty good idea how many hours those planes are flying per year. None of them are seeing 100 hrs/month per aircraft rentals ... and of those hours, only a portion of them are flown with instructors. During our winter months, the hours for some of the planes can be well under a couple hours/week.
The "salad" days of seeing 100+ hrs/month on trainer aircraft, such as when I got my ticket at a busy flight school that had around 35 instructors ... appear to be long gone for most flight schools. Two of my A&P IA friends that had aircraft rental/flight instruction operations with 4-8 instructors on call and 3-4 aircraft have closed their doors due to not having enough students to keep the instructors around. Their lease-backs were getting so few hours per month that the aircraft were sold by their owners rather than keep on losing money on them. The instructors were getting around $20/flight hour on 1099's, so all their taxes came off the top (self-employment being the biggest, but typically about 25% went to taxes).
Even Embry Riddle, a major player in the flight school business these days ... shows their "hourly" pay scale for flight instructors at $23.19. You can look up the ads for them as I did, and they're pretty busy schools so their instructors stay occupied. But even if they billed 2,000 hours/year, that's still only a $40K/year job less their tax bite ... and unlikely that they're getting in anywhere close to that number of hours per year. 1,000 hours/year might be a more realistic number.
As well, there are many on-line forums where the question "how much does a flight instructor make" is answered by current flight instructors where the scenario of working long days to get a few billable hours in appears to still be the norm in the industry for most. A few flight instructors with specialty niches appear to be billing at a lot higher rates ... and hold "Gold Seal" instructor status; but these folk are the exception to the general levels of instruction pay per those discussion forums. I'm not an instructor ... but I can read what folk who are have been posting about their hours, hours to get billable hours, and gross pay ... and it's still pretty consistent with what I saw in the biz years ago.
PS: Embry Riddle professors and staff get salaries and benefit packages which put the flight instructor pay rates to shame. It really points out the disparity in education investment to get a career in other ways compared to being a flight instructor or pro pilot. There are some long threads posted on-line where that analysis is done ... where even a senior widebody pilot knocking down a couple hundred grand after years of much lower pay, he's still far behind his contemporary who was drawing a good salary post college for years while the pilot was struggling to climb up the career and seniority ladder. The time value of the higher earnings earlier in the career come into play, too.
When Mrs Sun was an airport manager (degree'd pro in that biz) years ago and wanted me to go for my CFI ... I balked. I wanted to keep my aviation habit personal and keep it fun. Glad I made that choice. My career path is still working well for me and I'm long past the age where I could exercise an ATP ticket.
I just don't know what to say. You refuse to believe guys are flying the arse off just because somewhere in BFE isn't busy. Well duh. Go where the jobs/flying are.
As a CFI at a career school you bill for everything. Pre/post, lots of ground, sim time. My best week was 63 hours and keep in mind the federal requirement to pay 150% above 40 hrs. That means I was paid 74 hours that WEEK.
you appear to have played your cards right and have led a charmed career in aviation with your dedication and willingness to do what it took to get on the gravy train. Congrats to you and I hope you have a long and productive career flying your arse off and getting the highest compensation possible.
But your tale is not so common. I read your success story and then have to balance it with the far more numerous tales of different outcomes posted by others who would pay the price and do what is needed to achieve similar success.
As well, some of my knowledge of several flight school operations, flight school lease-back aircraft ... is first-hand. One of my employees got into acquiring 172's and refurbishing them for flight school lease-backs years ago with pretty good ROI's and monthly cash flows. Another bought a couple of Citabria's for flight schools ... for that niche training market of folk who wanted taildragger time and/or aerobatic instruction. Still another friend bought a couple of 182's for lease-backs to skydiving businesses.
Yet another friend/client of mine was buying up all the 152's he could find for years once that line was shut down by Cessna; his intent was to store them and refurbish as the demand & prices for them came back. He was spot on ... bought over 25 of them for around $3-4,000 each. A few years later and they were worth $12-15,000 each with modest refurbishment costs ... and he was "in the trade" so bought wholesale. I can't mention his name here, but he was a prominent player in the pilot supplies biz ... used to travel the airshow circuit with some of his pilot supplies lines, hardware kits, headsets, radios, mechanic's toolbags, seat bolsters, etc.. He was well placed to be in the right time/right place to find all those hangar queen deals that you hear about once every now and then and had spot cash to buy immediately.
Even as we watched 100LL get past $5/gal, these guys all did well for some years with a focus on the flight school activities ... and then GA took the nosedive of recent times.
Other than one of them who remains in the GA biz with a repair shop, all of them are now out of aviation, having to shut down losing operations when their aircraft weren't being flown the hours needed to keep them maintained and with a chance of profit to be captured.
A couple of them had tried leasing FBO's at airstrips around the country where they could keep their hand in the biz, but when fuel sales cratered and the cash cow to pay the ground/facilities lease died ... they got out. Maybe you haven't traveled the country as I have in the last few years, wheels ... but many of the FBO's where I used to receive a great welcome and aircraft fuel and services, courtesy cars, indeed ... even small airport restaurants ... don't exist anymore.
You may have a self-serve fuel island (OK by me), but other than fellow pilots/aircraft owners on the field, there's little activity done there anymore. The other services and conveniences aren't there anymore which enhanced the utility of my personal aircraft travel. Access to maintenance and repair is far more limited, too. It's pretty common to see signage at airstrips advising a "call-out" phone number if you need service/assistance ... and I've had numerous stops around my region of the country where there is no other person present except me. Being the airstrip enthusiast that I am, I even stop at many airstrips around my region when traveling in my Class B RV on sales trips ... just to see what's going on, maybe visit old friends, sometimes stop at a surviving on-field restaurant (few that there are anymore) ... so I get to see the activity (or lack thereof) at a lot of airstrips. It's not uncommon for me to find nothing but a bit of pavement, taxiway, runway, and a bunch of closed up hangars ... and nobody around, no activity at all.
Yes, there are a few destinations that survive and manage during these economic times like KSNY (popular stop for Cabela's and a good place to pratice an instrument approach or do a cross-country stop) ... but for every one that is surviving, there's many that have essentially shut down. IMO, these FBO's and small outfit operations were the backbone of GA for a long time ... and they're gone. Many of these little airstrips were where the spark of flight struck so many youngsters and where the reality of training took place. It wasn't always all "big business". My bet today is if you look around you, you'll find more folk paying big bucks to get trained for a pro flying career that isn't going to happen .... and will never have the success story that wheels describes ....
I have a somewhat blasphemous suggestion. Why not have the pilots union (ALPA?) set up an apprentice training program for future pilots just like any other Trade Union. The student could pay a modest fee and be trained on Union owned aircraft by Union instructors while working for the airlines in non flying positions. The airlines would benefit by having a steady stream of trained pilots and the people by having a defined career path with excellent pay and benefits.
The key would be to require the airline business to hire only Union people.
In my opinion, this "shortage", mainly at the regionals, started because people woke up and realized it's nuts to spend $100,000+ on training to make $25,000 per year starting out, living in a crashpad, with an uncertain future. Even if you make it to the top, without even adjusting for inflation, just comparing numbers to numbers, captains at the majors flying the largest planes made more money and had better benefits in the 1980s.
It doesn't cost anywhere near $150k to get qualified. More like 1/3 of that figure.
First year pay is now between $40k-$50k. Not great but hardly starvation wages. Plus good health insurance, decent 401k contributions, etc. Upgrades are now lightning quick compared to just a few years ago. 2-3 years tops at most places. I made over 100k as a junior RJ captain in my mid 20's...sorry that is good money for the majority of the US.
People must think long term, you don't push the easy button and end up in the left seat of a widebody. The pay off is fairly nice, early 30's getting on at a legacy means 30-35 year career of excellent QOL. If you want to work 6-10 days a month on call you can. Live anywhere in the US. 15%-16% 401k contribution. Decent healthcare. Profit sharing. I'm glad I chose the civ route and stayed with it, I'll retire in the top 100 of a huge carrier. I enjoy my job, the people, and always get excited about going to work (when I have to go). How many can say that?
Don't listen to hindsight2020 he's a bitter person who spends his time writing novels on the internet.
I've been flying commercially for 30 years. The vast majority of that has been in 121 airline ops amassing over 22k hours in the process. I've been at a major for over 20 years, and sit in the top 10% of the list. I'll retire at well under #50 on the master list.
In that time, there has never been a better time than now to be a pilot looking for a job.
A huge % of the current major airline pilots are retiring in the next decade. Heck, there are mainline DAL guys upgrading in under 2 years now.
The new 1500 hour rule is the direct result of the "pay for training" generation that started in the '90s, where 250 hours and big check turned you into an "airline pilot". Prior to that, even the smaller commuters wouldn't (generally) consider someone with that amount of time.
I had always dissuaded my 19 y.o. son from a career in aviation..... I've reconsidered that stance, and he's gonna start taking lessons for his private this summer. We'll see how he does, and take it from there afterwards.
It's not for everyone, and it's definitely not an easy road, but the payoff can be great, provided you time it right.
It's not worth the investment, both time and money, to choose aviation as a career. Fly for fun, sure, but at the end of the day, you still need to make a living, and for most people, preferably a really good living. There are professions out there that can pay fresh college grads as much, if not more, as major legacy carriers pay their most senior captains.
This is the crux of the biscuit and did it really need to take so many pages of threads before we got here? Adjusted for inflation airline pilot pay barely stays ahead of pilot pay 50 years ago. This means in terms of actual buying power, an airline pilot of 2016 is lower middle class. Airline pilot of the '60's or '70's were rock stars. You'd probably need to pay around $200K to make it equivalent. I don't see that happening.
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