Flight training at Mountain Aero Club

Aircraft: $75/hr

The commercial page budgets the Private at 25 hours dual in the Cessna 150 at $125/hr plus 25 hours solo at $75/hr, so $75 is the airplane and $125 is the airplane with an instructor. The instructor alone is never priced, and the site does not say whether $75 includes fuel. The same page budgets instrument and time-building hours at $150/hr in an airplane it does not name. Membership dues are not published.

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 does the instructor cost per hour on top of the airplane?Missing from their site

   The site prices dual at $125 and solo at $75 in the same Cessna 150 and never states the instructor rate itself.

5. 5

   What are the club dues, and do I have to join to train?Missing from their site

   It is a club with three bases and the site never says what membership costs or whether training requires it.

6. 6

   Which airplane is the $150/hr one for instrument and time-building work?

   The commercial budget prices a second, unnamed airplane for everything past the Private.

7. 7

   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.

8. 8

   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.

9. 9

   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 Mountain Aero Club's rates. The middle of what 4 West Virginia 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. Mountain Aero Club is not in it.

What we checked

A flying club across three West Virginia fields that publishes budgets rather than a rate card: solo time in its Cessna 150 at $75/hr, dual at $125/hr, and $150/hr in an unnamed airplane for instrument and time-building hours. Only the solo figure is an airplane rate, the instructor is never priced on its own, and dues are not published. Crawled across 30 of 77 pages, September 5, 2026.