Flight training at Aviation Club

Rates dated January 1, 2023. Dual is $350/hr with fuel and the instructor's fee included; tailwheel instruction in a Citabria is $300/hr; instruction in your own airplane is $125/hr.

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 instructor's hourly rate on its own?Missing from their site

   Only the $350 dual bundle and the $300 solo rate are published, and a single dual/solo pair is not enough to derive the difference safely; the own-airplane rate ($125) is a different tier.

4. 4

   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.

5. 5

   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.

6. 6

   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 Aviation Club's rates. The middle of what 9 New Jersey 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. Aviation Club is not in it.

What we checked

Publishes half a card: solo and dual for one 172P, with fuel and instructor bundled into the dual figure. The $50 gap between them is not recorded as an instructor rate because one pair proves nothing (the site's own-airplane instruction is $125/hr, which contradicts it). Rates are dated 1/01/2023, so ask whether they still hold. Checked August 31, 2026.