Flight training at Brazos Valley Flight Services

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 hourly rate on your cheapest trainer, and which airplane is that?Missing from their site

   This is the number that is missing from the site, and it is the largest line on your bill.

4. 4

   Is that rate wet or dry, meaning does it include fuel?Missing from their site

   A dry rate and a wet rate are not comparable. Dry rates can run $40 to $60 an hour lower for the same airplane.

5. 5

   What do the aeroplane and the instructor cost per hour?Missing from their site

   The site publishes no rate page. The only figure a crawl finds is inside an operations manual and is a sightseeing charge, not a training rate.

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 Brazos Valley Flight Services's rates. The middle of what 47 Texas 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. Brazos Valley Flight Services is not in it.

What we checked

THE ONLY FIGURE ON THIS SITE IS IN AN SOP PDF, and it is the price of a sightseeing tour certificate with a minimum Hobbs time attached, not a rate for training. An operations manual is a rich source of numbers and almost none of them are prices; read what the line is FOR before recording it.