Imagine a new customer walks into a flight school and wants to know how much it costs to learn how to fly. How many answers will they receive? How easy will a new customer understand the pricing structure? If they ever make it through all of these hurdles, how much of their investment gets returned to the CFI?
What is a “wet” rental rate? What is “HOBBS”? Why is ground instruction cheaper than instruction in the air? Why does instruction cost more for one rating than another if I’m with the same instructor? Who will be my instructor? Do I get to pick? Who is your best instructor? Is this even measured?
Over the course of the last 8 months I have contacted every flight school in the state of Washington. I have conducted market research about flight schools across the entire US and I’ve found that the average cost of a flight lesson to be $250/lesson (including aircraft rental). Nearly all flight schools have such confusing price structures that the flight schools don’t keep conversion numbers of those who walk in the door and convert to a paying customer. Moreover, the national average for a CFI’s earnings is $28/hr. Though most flight schools charge $65/hr for instruction. Equating toa national average 45% commission fee applied against the instructor.
Rather than try to explain these things, at Flyber, we believe these payment structures should be simple – rental fee, instructor fee. Done. Simple. Additionally, we believe that if CFI’s are truly independent contractors, as they are in most markets – the flight school should earn little to no commission from the CFI themselves.
Price will always be an obstacle with aviation. It’s expensive to operate aircraft. There is no way around this. Yet, why are we needlessly creating even more obstacles? Why confuse customers about how pricing works? If you ask around, here is the answer you’ll often find: “This is how we’ve always done it”. I don’t feel there is a need to explain why doing something one way simply because you’ve always done it that way is inherently flawed. Maybe you’ll hear, “Well its complicated because the operation is complicated.” The statement “The operation is complicated” is true. The requirement that the pricing structure for your customers be complicated for that reason is, well, dumb.
It’s time the General Aviation market start facing these issues. It’s time CFI’s start realizing they are getting paid too little for such an important and high-liability activity. Nationally, we have a very saturated CFI market. There are far more CFI’s than open positions in flight schools. This is the time to start making these changes. It’s time for CFI’s start thinking like CEO’s and business owners. It’s time for the independent CFI to lead the market. When this happens, the market will be forced to change. CFI’s can start a new movement and in so doing, change aviation forever and for the better. Let’s go.
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