In which country?

i would say it is probably very similar to the pay scale in the U.S.

economically speaking... the flight instructor is pretty much at the bottom of the food chain as far as commercial operations go.

sort of what Brett is implying with the "where i work" comment is that location is also a key factor in pay.

at the flight school 5 miles from where he is - their pay may be as much as 5 or 10 dollars different from his.

Scenario A: will you be working for an accredited flight school with a contract and a hand full of other instructors with many students and enough planes to go around?

Scenario B: will you be working for a college with a flying program?

Scenario C: will you be the local independent flight instructor at a small town air field?

the pay scale is pretty universal - at lease here in the USA - i have seen as low as 15 an hour to as much as 50. when i was doing it i started out at 25 an hour and went up to 30 an hour when i started offering multi and instrument training.

of course how much your being paid per hour means nothing unless you start putting hours into the hat.

Each of the above scenarios offers different advantages and disadvantages. CFIs who work with a school or college often only get the schedules and the students that the school is willing to give them in return they get more money and more flight time. but independent CFIs working for themselves usually make their own schedules and THEY decide when they will get vacation or days off etc.

My advice - get a cheap apartment- er... FLAT, and a room mate who knows well enough to turn the lights off when he leaves the room   

or - marry a nice pretty woman doctor.

Yeah.. look again at my list.. It shows what's charged vs what the CFI gets.. the school's cut is the un-shown difference (plus they get 10% of the rental money).

In theory.. if you get 20 hours consistently earning $26/hour  .. that's $520/week .. roughly $26,000/year. Certainly not a living wage, but from what  I've heard.. that's about what you'll make flying right-seat on a regional jet.

Plus.. the guys (one at any given time) at our club get $10/hour to man the place (answer phones, change oil, run errands, order parts, etc.), when they aren't instructing. You can get by on what works out to be about $30,000/year.

I'm semi-retired.. so I don't care.. lol  

Top tip - go and buy this months (May) Pilot magazine - it's the annual where to fly guide, which aslo covers all sort of careers (although this year, for the first time there was no mention of the military route). They were quoting somewhere around £18000 for an average full time FI. Less for those paid by the hour (due to all the days sat on the ground due to the Wx). 

some do operate charters... and some dont. 

for the ones that DO...

your a CFI first and a charter pilot / co-pilot second. so that means that this FBO has a pilot besides you that flies their charter trips for them already. If you're free to tag along and build a little time - fine - but if you have students scheduled you cant just wipe the schedule clean and head out in the Baron or King air for the day because you will quickly find out that the number of students you have will continuously dwindle to nothing once they get treated that way a few times.

Also you may or may not be paid for the time you spend on these "charter flights" therefor if it is worth it to a CFI to skip out on a day of guaranteed pay just to go for a ride in the King Air or whatever the plane might be then thats great... but you might have just lost a say that would have otherwise paid your rent.

I know A LOT of guys - myself included - who got burned on the "build time in the right seat with our charter guys" carrot on a stick routine. It works for some guys but not so well for others.

for example - as i built a lot of "seniority" at the FBO i worked with the local charter outfit told me i could get all the time i wanted in their king air and they would even let me take the trips - SOLO - that they couldn't make for scheduling conflicts ***IF*** i go to school with them next time they go and get trained on the king air the catch is i would have to pay for my own training... they said i could be looking at 200 to 400 hours in the next year or so turbo prop PIC. so i agreed.

I paid for the training - it wasnt much really in the grand scheme of things, about 4500 bucks, but a month after i got out of the training they sold their king air and closed the doors to their business... come to find out they needed a third pilot to come in for training and pay full price in order to guarantee them the 50% discount on their recurrent training.

so there i stood less $4,500 with about 12 more hours in a king air than i had to start with.

moral of the story - the charter gag isnt always what its cracked up to be - do your homework and look out for number one (thats you) first!! 

bok269 wrote on Apr 15^th, 2007 at 11:14pm:


Depends.  Some city owned airports will have city codes that certain FBOs have to live by in order to sell fuel at that airport, which is really the meat and potatoes of FBOs at least where I'm from anyway.  Some are required to provide charter services and some are not.  Then again they might just do it anyway because they can.  Usually though its the other way around.  They'll provide charter services but go out of their way to avoid flight training simply because it's not a big money maker.  I occasionally get to substitute pilot for a local company that owns a King Air 200.  I get to work the radios, flaps, and bleed air valves all from the right seat.  And oh yeah, "ding dong" the passengers when it's time to land. Occasionally I'll get to fly a leg from the right seat when we don't have passengers on board.  I'm simply there to fill a seat for insurance requirements, not FAA requirements.  If you ever do sit right seat on a single pilot airplane such as the King Air, make sure the guy you're flying with has an instructor certificate before you log it because you cannot legally log it as SIC time if you're flying an airplane that only requires one pilot per the regs.  I log everything as dual and have the company pilot endorse my logbook for the flight.  I also get paid 50 bucks per day and meals and hotels are covered.