Flight training at Deer Valley Skyhawks

1. 1

   What do you charge per hour for flight instruction, and is ground instruction billed at the same rate?Missing from their site

   This is the number that is missing from the site. Ground is often billed separately and at a different rate.

2. 2

   Does the instructor rate change for the Instrument, Commercial, or CFI, or is it flat across everything?Missing from their site

   Plenty of schools charge more for advanced instruction. A flat rate quoted for the Private can climb later.

3. 3

   What is the hourly rate on your cheapest trainer, and which airplane is that?Missing from their site

   This is the number that is missing from the site, and it is the largest line on your bill.

4. 4

   Is that rate wet or dry, meaning does it include fuel?Missing from their site

   A dry rate and a wet rate are not comparable. Dry rates can run $40 to $60 an hour lower for the same airplane.

5. 5

   What are the current rental rates, and do they require club membership?Missing from their site

   This is a flying club, so the rate you pay usually depends on joining, and the only rate figures on the site sit inside price sheets dated 2018.

6. 6

   What does instruction cost per hour?Missing from their site

   No instructor figure appears anywhere on the site.

7. 7

   What are the membership dues and the buy-in, if any?

   For a club those can exceed a year of the hourly difference against a commercial school, and they are not published.

8. 8

   Do you offer block rates or prepay discounts, and what is the refund policy if I stop partway?

   Block discounts are common and rarely published. The refund terms matter more than the discount.

9. 9

   What do you charge for the written test, the checkride, and the examiner's fee?

   The DPE fee alone runs $800 to $1,200 in most of the country and is almost never in a quoted hourly rate.

10. 10

    How many trainers and how many full-time instructors do you have right now?

    Availability decides your pace, and pace decides your total more than the hourly rate does.

What to compare their answer against

Not Deer Valley Skyhawks's rates. The middle of what 10 Arizona schools charge, to hold your phone quote against.

From the schools here that publish full rate cards, the same sample behind the Flight Training Cost Report. Deer Valley Skyhawks is not in it.

What we checked

WORTH KNOWING BEFORE YOU TRUST A CRAWL OF THIS SITE. A crawl returns a long ladder of figures rising by a constant, from $13.16 up past $347, which looks like a rate table and is not one. It is a CREDIT CARD FEE SCHEDULE dated 2018: a Hobbs-time-by-cost grid showing what a rental costs once the club's card surcharge of 2.9% plus $0.30 is added. Deer Valley Skyhawks is a members' flying club. No current rate card and no instruction rate is published, so nothing is recorded here.