Flight training at Empyrean Aero

Both aeroplanes are published "Rate/Hour (wet)", so fuel is included. Nothing else on the site carries an hourly figure. The $200 and $250 figures are for Kansas City Plaza sightseeing tours and have nothing to do with training.

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 does an instructor cost per hour, and does it change for the multi or the ATP?Missing from their site

   Both aeroplanes are priced wet and the instructor is the only missing number. Empyrean trains through the multi-engine CFI and the ATP, and those tiers usually differ.

4. 4

   Which aeroplane do you use for the multi-engine rating and the ATP?

   The fleet page shows a two-seat Skycatcher and one 172, neither of which is a twin, so the multi training must happen in something not listed.

5. 5

   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.

6. 6

   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.

7. 7

   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 Empyrean's rates. The middle of what 4 Kansas 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. Empyrean is not in it.

What we checked

Two aeroplanes published wet, a Skycatcher at $125 and a 172 at $170, and no instructor rate anywhere across thirty pages. Empyrean advertises training through the multi-engine rating, the multi-engine CFI and the ATP, plus complex and high-performance endorsements, without listing a twin or a complex aircraft in its fleet. This school was unreadable earlier on August 7, 2026 because of a SiteGround captcha we had triggered ourselves, and was deliberately left unrecorded until the challenge cleared and it could be crawled properly.