Flight training at Louisville Aviation

Aircraft: $176/hr

Nineteen aeroplanes and a helicopter, every one labelled wet. The Cessna 172s run $176 to $196, a Cessna T182T Skylane G1000 is $295, a Cirrus SR-22 is $375, a Piper Aztec is $454 and a Bell 47G is $595. Per-tail figures are NOT recorded here: see the note.

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 aeroplane and on the ground?Missing from their site

   Nineteen aeroplanes are priced to the cent and no instructor rate appears anywhere on the site.

4. 4

   Which aeroplane does the $225 one-hour flight lesson use?Missing from their site

   That price is stated to include fuel, rental and instructor, so it would give the instructor rate by subtraction, except that the 172s range from $176 to $196 and the page does not say which one you fly.

5. 5

   Can you confirm the rate for the specific tail I would be flying?

   The aircraft page renders as a grid, and two reads of it paired the same aeroplane with two different prices.

6. 6

   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.

7. 7

   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.

8. 8

   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 Louisville Aviation'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. Louisville Aviation is not in it.

What we checked

READ THIS BEFORE RE-CRAWLING LOUISVILLE AVIATION. Two traps. First, THE www HOST IS DEAD: www.louisvilleaviation.com refuses every connection and the bare louisvilleaviation.com serves the whole site, so a crawl of AOPA's address reports the school unreachable and finds nothing. Second, THE AIRCRAFT PAGE IS A FLATTENED GRID: two reads of it gave the 2004 Cessna 172S as $176 and then as $196, which is the Gibson shape, so no per-tail rate is recorded here and only the lowest published figure is. The one-hour lesson at $225 "includes fuel, rental, and instructor" but does not say which aeroplane, so it cannot be subtracted into a CFI rate. Bowman Field's oldest operating flight school, with a Bell 47G alongside the aeroplanes.