Flight training at Mike's Flying Service

Five aeroplanes on a page headed Aircraft Rental Rates, with no statement of whether fuel is included and no instruction rate anywhere on the site.

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 does instruction cost per hour, and do the aeroplane rates include fuel?Missing from their site

   The rates page prices five aeroplanes and stops. It carries no instruction rate and does not say whether fuel is in the aeroplane figure.

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 Mike's Flying Service'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. Mike's Flying Service is not in it.

What we checked

A page literally headed RATES that prices the whole fleet and never mentions instruction, which is the commonest shape of a half card. HTTP-only, so an https-upgrading fetcher sees it as dead. Second operator AOPA files at Terrell with Terrell Aviation, which has no website at all.