TIME FLIES, AND SO DOES MONEY
How Much Does A Private Pilot's License Cost? This Flow Diagram Breaks Down One Person's Expenses
Having the courage, skill and drive to learn how to fly an airplane is one thing. Having the money to finance it is another.
A Redditor who got their pilot's license shared the breakdown of expenses in a Sankey diagram in r/dataisbeautiful.
The pilot's total costs by the time they earned their license came to $23,374.51. The main components of the expenses required for this person to earn their license were instruction, equipment, plane rental, aviation club costs (organizations that often pay jointly to share an aircraft and bring down the cost of flying for everyone), taxes and the cost to take the flight test, or checkride, with the FAA.
Here's the data presented in the Redditor's Sankey diagram, and then broken down by us in table form.
Sankey diagram
Table
| Expense Type | Cost | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Plane Rental | $11,228.00 | |
| Club Cost | $1,100.00 | Club dues $600, membership fee $500 |
| Instruction | $6,522.00 | Air $3,612, ground $2,910 |
| Equipment | $2,396.00 | Bose A20 $1,049, iPad Air $749, Foreflight subscription $299, PPL student kit $299 |
| Taxes | $1,327.91 | |
| DPE (Checkride) | $800.00 |
The pilot shared some specifics of their situation that influenced the time frame for their training and added a little extra cost:
Data was sourced using a combination of my emailed receipts from the flight school and tracked expenses. I used SankeyMatic to create the visualization.
Context:
I started my PPL journey April 23rd, 2021. I work full-time, so I was only able to attend part-time, usually over the weekend. Here is my total expenses. Breakdown of individual costs below:
Plane Rental (Wet, club member): 135/hr Instructor: 55/hr Total hours logged after my checkride 89.3
I thought it would be useful to share this information, given how common this question comes up in the aviation community. The FAA minimal requirement for a private pilot license is 40 hours of flight time, but few people ever complete it that quickly. I was initially signed off to complete my check-ride around the 65 hours mark, but due to delays (5 reschedules), I was not able to take the ride until 3 months after my originally scheduled date. This meant that I needed to keep flying, and stay fresh which substantially added to the cost.
So if you're considering learning to fly, you might want to start saving some cash.
Source: "Total Cost of my Private Pilot License" in r/dataisbeautiful
[Image courtesy Kristopher Allison]
