Flight training at Gateway Flight Training

Aircraft: $140/hr (dry)

Gateway's rates are stated DRY, so fuel is billed on top of every figure here, which is unusual in this directory and makes these rates look cheaper than they are against a wet-rate school. $140/hr covers its instrument-capable trainers and $150/hr the complex aeroplane, which needs 15 hours of complex time before solo.

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

   Your published rates are dry. Roughly what does fuel add per hour on the trainer?

   The published figures leave fuel out, so they understate the real hourly cost until you add it.

4. 4

   What does instruction cost, and what does fuel add to the dry rate?Missing from their site

   Both halves matter here: the instruction rate is unpublished AND the aeroplane rates exclude fuel, so the quoted figure is not the hourly cost.

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 Gateway's rates. The middle of what 5 Missouri 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. Gateway is not in it.

What we checked

DRY RATES, WHICH IS THE THING TO NOTICE. Fuel is billed separately on top, so comparing Gateway's $140 against a wet $180 elsewhere is comparing two different things. Its robots.txt asks for ten seconds between requests and the crawl stopped on its time budget after sixteen pages, so coverage here is time-limited rather than exhaustive. Creve Coeur is shared with Piston Aviation and Independent Aviation Solutions. Checked August 13, 2026.