I know there are a few flight instructors on here, so would be interested to hear your opinion.

Although I'm a long ways off, I would like to work towards my instructor rating. Have any of you operated your own 1 man flight school? Is there any money to be made or does this fall under the old saying "the most dangerous part of being a commercial pilot is starving to death"

Looking back at my PPL flight school, they had a fleet of 9 172's of questionable airworthiness. They were forever in the shop for maintenance and on a good day maybe 6 of them were flying, all burning 8-10gph of 100LL. Despite this they seem to be profitable and have been in business for 30+ years.

If a guy were to operate an SLSA, say an S19, S7, RV12 etc, burning mogas (not sure if that is legal for commercial ops), the operating costs would be a fraction of where I trained. Or does economies of scale come into play with hangar fees, insurance, other fixed costs?

Basically just wondering if anyone had any success with a similar 1 man operation, could also be in an inexpensive trainer like a Champ, T-craft, etc.

Jeff

I'm NOT an instructor and have never operated a flight school. However, it seems to me that you might be able to carve out a specific niche for yourself if you can break the cost barrier for your customers.

If you can find an Aeronca 7FC Tri-Champ with 85 or 100HP, and (because of the lower hourly/maintenance/insurance cost) provide basic, initial flight instruction for a significantly lower cost than all those other flight schools, then I have to believe you can make a profitable niche for yourself. I believe the 7FC itself is not LSA compliant, but the instruction you provide in it will count towards the Sport Pilot rating. (CFI's correct me if I'm wrong about this).

Regardless of this, it seems to me that you can provide ab initio instruction up through solo and cross country flying, teaching old-school proper airmanship, and delivering it at a lower cost.

Your marketing materials and sales website would have to support this niche, and separate your offering from the other cookie-cutter C-172 based schools. This is critical because sooner or later someone is going to ask you why they should start with you if they can't continue and do their instrument rating in the old Tri-Champ. Your marketing position should obviously be that they will save so much money by doing the basic stuff with you in the Champ, that the savings will pay for part of their complex and instrument instruction later. And they will learn better basic skills in the classic Champ as a bonus.

Even though I'm sure that a $25K Tri-Champ would be cheaper to insure than a $75K 172, the cost of insurance will probably be the biggest weight around the neck of any flight school.

I ran an unofficial one man flight school with Ercoupes, Taylorcraft, Tri-Champ, Tri-Pacers, and C-175. All paid for themselves, but no, I didn't make any money. Also I was busy teaching high school, coaching football and basketball, flying Hueys in the National Guard, and crop dusting in the summer. In exchange for dropping most of that stuff, my wife let me go into full time crop dusting. Later when my back got bad, I changed to full time pipeline patrol.

Spraying or even flying pipeline are much better money makers than instruction. I love teaching, however, and have done it continuously since 1974. I generally had a student with me on the pipeline. For doing most of the flying and keeping me rested for the nasty stuff, he got free flying and room and board on the three to five day weekly run.

Yes, primary students can learn that kind of flying just as easily as they can learn to fly normally or run a combine. It ain't rocket science.

Yes, I caution them about learning the school solution when with some instructors and on the flight test. It just doesn't have to be learned first. Over the years I have found it harder to teach crop dusting to those with many hours of normal flying.

I have one question for you if you want to be an instructor. Do you want to be, or do. Teachers teach. Some educational specialists and flight instructors just want to be.
.

Thanks EZ, that's exactly what I was thinking. Although I enjoyed my PPL training, all the instructors were from India (nothing wrong with that, they were great people) but they were simply there to build hours to move on to airline jobs. After reading Contact Flying, I felt I missed out on some basic airmanship skills/techniques. I have no desire to fly a twin IFR, and I've got to believe that there are others out there of the low and slow variety that would appreciate that type of instruction, just simple VFR "back to basics" type flying. And if you could offer that in a tailwheel low-hp plane I can't see the operating costs being very high allowing a significant discount over the bigger flight schools with all their IFR rated birds.

Cheers

Jeff

Thanks for the insight Jim. When you were instructing however (was this quite a long time ago?), was the focus more towards future airline pilots or was it still more in line with what you preach in your book? If this was quite a while ago maybe the times have shifted and there might be a niche available now? Maybe that niche is already being filled by the light sport category, but I'm not aware if their instructional techniques are any different than the standard PPL program.

Thoroughly enjoyed your book by the way.

Jeff

Jeff,

Send your email to me at [email protected] and I will email you the latest edit of my e-book, "Safe Maneuvering Flight Techniques." I have enjoyed working with young instructors, over the years, who want to teach.

Yes, my experience is dated. Hopefully, the need for lower cost instruction has influenced the Light Sport community to be more responsive to the needs of their students. There are many reasonable cost Taylorcraft, Ercoupe, Tri-Pacer, and Champ airplanes still out there. Also many Tri-Pacers have been converted to Pacers and they are also reasonable now.

Tailwheel is a good nitch, but I used the Taylorcraft for spray students only. The insurance is not so much worse, but down time and repairs are much higher than in my day. Few do fabric work for others now, and I was a clutz without A&P.

Jim

I ran a FBO with fuel, maintenance, flight
Instruction, aircraft sales, and 14 airplanes. Everything was nice, but not the cheapest around.
At the end of the year profit was 1.5% of gross.
Poorest return on investment of any other
business that I know of.
Find a good job, instruct on the side if that's your calling.
Dave

Light Sport students won't be able to solo the Tri-Champ without a current medical if that makes any difference. Pay particular attention to Jim's words about wanting to BE a teacher. I taught basic electricity and math for the trades at the Community College level and I learned to hate them bastards. Pilots I'm sure are a better class of people generally than electricians but make sure that you don't get in the position where you can't fire them.

I think a Cherokee is a lower maintenance training platform than a 172. As far as parts cost goes they are both orphans but mid '70s 150hp cherokees cost about half what a good 172 would cost. Don't buy anything that's ever been based in Florida.

noodles wrote:I know there are a few flight instructors on here, so would be interested to hear your opinion.

Although I'm a long ways off, I would like to work towards my instructor rating. Have any of you operated your own 1 man flight school? Is there any money to be made or does this fall under the old saying "the most dangerous part of being a commercial pilot is starving to death"

Looking back at my PPL flight school, they had a fleet of 9 172's of questionable airworthiness. They were forever in the shop for maintenance and on a good day maybe 6 of them were flying, all burning 8-10gph of 100LL. Despite this they seem to be profitable and have been in business for 30+ years.

If a guy were to operate an SLSA, say an S19, S7, RV12 etc, burning mogas (not sure if that is legal for commercial ops), the operating costs would be a fraction of where I trained. Or does economies of scale come into play with hangar fees, insurance, other fixed costs?

Basically just wondering if anyone had any success with a similar 1 man operation, could also be in an inexpensive trainer like a Champ, T-craft, etc.

Jeff

Jeff,

I have operated a one person, one airplane flight training enterprise. In that case, I used my Cessna 170 for flight training, mostly on floats and skis, but some on wheels. I did not do any primary training with the airplane, I really didn't want to, for a lot of reasons.

With the right airplane, and in the right part of the country, you could make a LITTLE bit of profit doing what you suggest. Could you earn a living with one plane.....I doubt it, but maybe. If you could stand to work a job and flight instruct on the side, that can work....that's what I did.

Right airplane: For primary, as EZ suggested, I'd probably try to stick with a tri-gear airplane. Insurance, and quicker to solo. But, there are folks out there who'd like to learn in a tailwheel airplane....but you reduce your potential customer base.

An SLSA is going to be expensive to purchase. If the only reason you're buying it is to do flight instruction.....it'll be tough to pay off. The other thing to consider is your weight plus the weight of your customers plus the weight of gas. That is the big limitation on LSA airplanes. In fact, it's probably the reason that Cessna quit building the SkyCatcher. I know of a school that bought three, and the DPE they used weighed too much to fly in those airplanes.....so their students had to fly 100 miles to take a flight test....duh.

If you're trying to focus on Light Sport primarily, I think it'd be really hard to build a business on that, UNLESS you can find an SLSA that can carry a decent load.

But, there are a bunch of other older airplanes out there that are good solid trainers, one being the 172. There's a reason it's probably one of the most popular trainers ever. I don't care what your student looks like, they can legally fly a 172 if they can pass a medical.

If you're thinking of buying an airplane and using it both for flight training and personal use, this does afford some tax benefits. You just need to keep track of personal vs commercial use. That may be a good way to go.

You're going to have to figure out the airplane, then explore insurance rates, hangar (you may have to park outside, and that can be done), you'll also need some "sit down" space to pre and post flight brief, and figure out fuel.

If the plane you purchase has an STC for auto fuel, you can use auto fuel in a Part 91 flight training program. Not in a 141 program, unless you can talk your FAA guy into it.

It can be done, but again, you'd have a hard time earning a decent income if this is your only income. If you can find other work, even if it's part time, it could work.

Send me a PM if you want, and I'll get you a phone number, and we can visit more.

MTV

Jeff,

I know you like my techniques, but MTV has more practical, economic, mechanical...let's just say he has more sense than me. I recommend him.

Jim

MTV, thanks for the advice. I like the recommendation of doing it part time and having the tax benefit of it being a personal plane as well as the trainer. Since I do have a pretty good job/career I think the logical way forward would be keep working towards it in my spare time and if it ever looks like it could be a viable option on its own, well that's great but in the meantime I won't quit my day job.

Great advice as always from this group, thanks guys.

A very important point was made... if you are trying to make your living as a CFI, and you're not making any money, then sooner or later you will either start to hate the students, or hate the profession, or both. Money and poverty aside, that anger and frustration will probably decrease the quality of the education you are providing, on top of all the other problems.

Worse yet, if you think icing and engine failures are frightening, spend an hour arguing with a wife who is furious about living too low on the hog.

So if you have the option of maintaining a reasonable career that actually pays for the house and the kids' education, then you can do the instructing as a hobby/business. As mentioned, this allows you to write off a lot of airplane expenses, and it might allow you to be selective about the students, take more pride in being an instructor, and be the equivalent of the gourmet chef instead of the fry cook.

It goes without saying that the concept of flight instructors not being able to make a good living is one of the biggest travesties in aviation.

simple: you can't pay the rent and live off small planes... get a job. Then fly and teach with your discretionary money. The sad truth about aviation...

All of the independent flight instructors I know or knew do it as a part-time gig, because they enjoy it. I doubt there's a lot of money to be made, but IMHO it's possible to eke out a profit given the right circumstances. If you want to keep your costs down, it really helps to have at least an A&P ticket. An A&P / commercial pilot friend of mine ran a one-man part 135 air taxi show a few years ago-- the only reason he was able to make money at it was that he did everything himself other than to pay an IA to be his director of maintenance.
No offense, but the suggestion to get a Tri-Champ to me seems beyond silly. First of all, it's an uncommon if not downright rare airplane, and secondly- why? Since it's not LSA, you can't use it for anything that a more common, less expensive, and probably more capable airplane wouldn't do. Think Cessna 150/152, Cessna 172, or Cherokee-- you can find some pretty affordable examples of those for sale pretty readily.
If you want to do sport pilot instruction, buy an LSA-compliant Champ- and an Ercoupe for those that don't want to or can't fly a taildragger. BTW you can get your sport pilot instructor ticket right off your private license , or for that matter off a sport pilot license-- no instrument or commercial needed. Sport pilot / LSA seems to be an unfilled niche in a lot of areas. Nobody does it or even has an LSA-compliant airplane on the rental line at most of the local airports around here-- so it's probably the same where you are. Check into it.

contactflying wrote: Send your email to me at [email protected] and I will email you the latest edit of my e-book, "Safe Maneuvering Flight Techniques." I have enjoyed working with young instructors, over the years, who want to teach. ........

Does that offer go for the rest of us?

None taken, but the reasoning is that the Tri-Champ would be burning 5 gallons an hour, and the 172 burns 7 or 8. Even if all maintenance and insurance was the same, there is still a significant savings in direct operational cost.

I did not suggest the LSA Ercoupe because it's kinda uncomfortable for larger people, some some of his potential students might not be happy.