What flight training at Five Star Flight Academy costs

Five Star Flight Academy publishes $180 per hour for the Piper Cherokee 140 and $85 per hour for instruction on it, checked October 12, 2026. Applied to those published rates, PilotBound estimates a private pilot certificate at about $20,265, in a range of $17,400 to $23,100. That covers roughly 72 hours of flying and instruction plus the one-time fees most quotes leave out, including the written test, the examiner's checkride fee, a medical, and study materials. It is a PilotBound estimate built on the school's published rates, not a quote from Five Star Flight Academy.

Flying twice a week, PilotBound estimates about 6 months at Five Star Flight Academy to reach the private pilot checkride, at roughly 72 hours. Pace is the single biggest variable: flying once a week typically stretches the timeline and raises the total, because time between lessons gets spent re-learning. Weather, aircraft availability, and instructor turnover all push the same direction.

Five Star Flight Academy does not state on its own website whether it trains under Part 61 or Part 141, so we do not list one. It is worth asking directly before you enroll: Part 141 follows an FAA-approved syllabus and is generally what VA benefits require, while Part 61 is more flexible on scheduling.

Five Star Flight Academy publishes $180 per hour for the Piper Cherokee 140, a wet rate, so fuel is included in the hourly figure. A wet rate is the easier one to compare, because the number you see is the number you fly on. Rates checked October 12, 2026.

Five Star Flight Academy trains Private Pilot, Instrument Rating and Commercial Pilot. Instruction runs $85 to $90 per hour depending on the rating and the aircraft, since advanced and type-specific instruction is priced above the standard rate. PilotBound's estimator on this page prices any of these paths on Five Star Flight Academy's own published rates.