Flight training at Flywell Aviation

All three 172s are $185/hr wet, or $180 on block time. The Super Decathlon's $310 is dual only and already includes the instructor and a parachute, so it is not comparable to the others.

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 instruction cost per hour in the Cessnas?Missing from their site

   The three 172s are priced wet and on block time and the instructor is never priced, except inside the Super Decathlon's bundled dual rate.

4. 4

   What does block time require up front?

   Every 172 shows a block rate $5/hr below the standard one and the site does not say what buying a block costs.

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 Flywell's rates. The middle of what 4 Kentucky 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. Flywell is not in it.

What we checked

READ THIS BEFORE RE-CRAWLING FLYWELL. A crawl reports an instructor rate of $200 and it is a PENALTY: the renter use policy PDF says a $200 charge is retained to close a prepay account. The $50 in the same PDF is a cleaning fee for returning an aeroplane untidy. Neither is an hourly rate, and the school publishes no instructor rate at all. The one price that does include an instructor is the Super Decathlon's $310, which bundles aeroplane, parachute and CFI into a dual-only figure.