Flight training at Griffing Flying Service

The Archer is $200/hr solo and $255/hr with an instructor; instruction in a customer's airplane is $80/hr and ground training $55/hr. The instructor's share of the dual figure is not stated on its own, and one subtraction is a guess, so no instructor rate is recorded.

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

   Do the published aircraft rates include fuel, or is fuel billed separately?

   The site does not say, and it is the difference between two rates that look identical and are not.

4. 4

   What is the instructor rate in your Archer on its own?Missing from their site

   Solo and dual are priced and the difference is not confirmed anywhere else on the page.

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 Griffing's rates. The middle of what 13 Ohio 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. Griffing is not in it.

What we checked

The Lake Erie islands air carrier at Port Clinton, which also trains in one Archer priced solo and dual. Crawled September 5, 2026.