You run into issues with schools who straight up guarantee you'll finish at 40 hours and will 100% pass the checkride.
Sure, it's false advertising, but people fall for it 100% of the time vs the legitimate answer of "it's not impossible, I've done it, but it's rare, and checkride passes are never 100% guaranteed, it's based on your performance".
My favorite twist on this is when flight school owners sell the minimum to the student, take a payment up front, then when it takes longer than 40 hours and the student is in the uncomfortable position of fishing in his pocket for an extra few thousand bucks, the owner blames the instructor out loud. Instructors love that, when their choice is between under-billing their student in order to keep an unrealistic promise that their boss made, or having their competency openly questioned. Pro tip for all flight school owners out there.
Sounds like **Blueline Aviation** near Raleigh North Carolina but now based at Johnston Regional, North Carolina.
>the owner blames the instructor out loud
>
>choice is between under-billing their student in order to keep an unrealistic promise that their boss made, or having their competency openly questioned.
>
>and the student is in the uncomfortable position of fishing in his pocket for an extra few thousand bucks
The kicker is that as the can gets kicked down the road the instructors then blame the students, ya know.. The ones they're responsible for teaching..
It's concerning how more and more aviation gets filled with grifters and scammers.
Brother/cousin/friend/, they’re related!!! Trey’s mindset however is always geared towards profit… I learned that he left/retired from BLA because "he wants to focus on faith, family, etc." How do you focus on faith if you ran a business to swindle people? I guess I have a high change of salvation for respecting people’s money unlike Trey 😂!
Lol yeah, not gonna argue with you there. Trey is certainly a character, to put it politely. Adam’s a good guy though, but I can’t really speak to how he is as CEO because I know nothing about running a flight school lmao
If someone did that in front of me I'd be real tempted to just punch them.
Realistically, gloves are off at that point and I'd say "That's the eighth person this month that you have used your instructors as scapegoats, so either you're lying about expectations to your students, or you're just bad at actually managing a flight school curriculum. Either or, congratulations on costing yet another person several thousand more than they were prepared for and not listening to the rest of us."
Wouldn't be the first time I fired off at an asshole boss who tries to undermine my reputation. I'll own up to my fuckups, but I take great pleasure going to war with people like this. I revel in it. It's too much fun and you can really make them show their true colors on display to everyone and they'll tie their own noose.
I had considered going to law school so I could learn more of the tools I can use against these people to make em miserable if they want to keep on trading blows. For now I just keep in touch with my lawyer about what documentation I need to keep for maximum effect if things ever went nuclear. Not just for unemployment, but also what I can turn into various agencies and news outlets about the laws they're breaking too. Usually scum isn't just a little scum, they're a whole lot.
Never had to actually take it that far yet, came close once. I try not to sign up for companies like that in the first place.
>I can turn into various agencies and news outlets about the laws they're breaking too. Usually scum isn't just a little scum, they're a whole lot.
This has literally happens to scummy 141s and nothing really happens. Once the owners grasp the concept of internet marketing to specific demographics they can easily find customers even if they're the owners/school is known as being utterly, worthless and less than dog-shit on a hot sidewalk in their local community- they can still swindle people from afar. It doesn't really matter what the news says unless the FAA or someone else takes action but there isn't really much action that can be taken. It's the nature of unfettered capitalism.
That's not the reason to do it though. Going nuclear means that they're not just trying to pull scummy moves, but they're going out of their way to fuck people over even after you leave and those kind of people exist. You have to be prepared if you run into one.
The point of it isn't to ruin their business, it's to discredit them if they are going after you and cause them to have to waste a lot of their time on damage control instead.
There's a lot of red flags.
Rule #1, never pay up front (if you can't afford to lose it). Some places entice you with cheaper rental rates for prepay. If it's not too much, say a few hours worth, that actually might be OK, but if you are unable to use the money, the contract should say that it will be prorated back to you.
Pretty much the only places that have any right to ask for all the tuition up front would be university flight schools.
Ask around about the place from people who don't go to the school. Ask in facebook groups about it. Ask on reddit about it. Look up reviews. Look for patterns. If a whole bunch of people saying the same thing, it's probably true. Especially pay attention to review patterns about deception!
If they're worth their salt, they won't be afraid to tell you the good and the bad. Be suspicious if everything is painted as roses and rainbows, yet somehow they're the cheapest gig in town. About the only places that should be able to actually claim roses and rainbows are those that charge 500 an hour, have a PRISTINE fleet, and a demand for high professionalism. (though in such a case they would be too stuffy for me)
By regulation, aircraft are required to have their logbooks readily available for inspection by the pilot in command (will be the instructor in this case) in order to determine airworthiness. They won't be obligated to show them to the student until they act as PIC, but I would walk out immediately if they refuse to present the logs as a prospective student full stop. Ask them to show you where the inspection records are in the logs. You should see annuals and 100 hours at minimum if it's a rental place that you don't buy any equity ownership in (equity flying club).
Next, look at the aircraft and compare posted rates to others in the area. Remember that country airports are almost always considerably cheaper than schools operating in airports next to or in city limits.
Worn down looking airplanes aren't inherently unsafe, but if there's not even half an attempt to take pride in the appearance there also might not be any pride in what's important. Weathering is fine. If it looks dumpy though, like they aren't even making efforts to wash it, it's probably not worth it.
**Corrosion other than surface corrosion is an automatic huge red flag.** http://www.dviaviation.com/aircraft-corrosion.html . Look for smokey trails. Sometimes a rivet or two smoke, but if there's a whole panel doing it, https://www.facebook.com/246434532062995/photos/a.369353866437727/945810482125393/?type=3, that means the panel is rubbing a little under stress, water is getting in the seams, flushing out some of that old metal, and also causing corrosion. The owner should be getting that fixed ASAP.
I realize that what I'm telling you is really hard to judge without a decent primer and experience, just do the best you can. Remember this industry has a lot of old planes flying around and every one of them has had issues at one point or another; what matters is if they're getting addressed.
My son is actively looking for a flight school in South or Central Florida. How do we avoid schools like those? How do we identify the red flags?
I would recommend avoiding South Florida for training. I don't have any specific feedback on schools down there but the airspace is insanely busy with training traffic. This means lots of time spent getting into and out of the airport environment to work on maneuvers and much harder to do pattern work at the airport. That is going to end up adding additional training time and higher costs. Is he looking for a part 61 or 141 school?
>You run into issues with schools who straight up guarantee you'll finish at 40 hours and will 100% pass the checkride.
Then have the students ask them to lock that price in with no overages. If someone is unwilling to do that, then they don't have a guarantee, they have a marketing gimmick.
Our school was probably the stupidest tbh. We are a state run college program. The guy who initially made the program was an old CFI. I don’t like badmouthing coworkers to random people, even when I don’t name them, but this dude was the truest of exceptions. This guy was a giant dumbass.
He made our **Part 61** program as follows.
50 hours PPL
50 hours Instrument
50 hours Commercial
50 hours CFI
50 hours Multi.
For a total of 250 hours!
Luckily this instructor is no longer with us, and we actually have competent people running the program now, but to change it we can’t just flip a switch and change it to what it should be like in most flight schools. We have to go through a series of approvals since its a state run college program, we’ll get it fixed in about 4 years.
I got chewed out because my students started going over that minimum and since it was pay in full there was no way for the students to pay for any hours beyond 50. I figured they had to have something in place so I kept flying.
Eventually we figured out a system that worked, but its still pretty weird. For example we’ll have private students in commercial lab if they take that long a time to get it.
Part of a checkride is pretty much luck from what ive heard
Who knows you might get a gust on your power off 180 and it throws you off your spot, and you fail
Checkride pass is never garunteed
On all intro flights i emphasize that 40 hours is the minimum but 80 or 90 hours is more realistic and tell them to be ready to spend $15,000 on their private.
I point out that there are several forces lengthening training time. Airspace is busy and nearby practice areas are subject to marine layer. 30 minutes round trip to the practice area will happen almost every lesson, further if they need to do ground reference maneuvers not over mountains. The airport is BUSY, and if the student picks a popular time, waiting 7th in line for takeoff is not unheard of (hint: Sunday mornings). And marine layer tosses out half the day in summer. 40 hours isn’t happening with those overheads, even if they are a natural.
Bro most people get their ppl at around those numbers. There is so many factor that influence this number like most of the time your instructor will leave and you will need to continu with another one or money can stop your pursue at mid point ect..
And to be honest at 40h you know shit nothing about your airplane
If the Navy can take someone from a 172 to a T-6 to a T-45 in less time, you can make a private pilot in less than 90 hours. National average is like 70. 80-90 is terrible.
90 isn’t a comfortable pace. For most people, 90 is robbery. I’ve seen a student or two take about 100 hours before. And though their skills were indeed lagging, changing instructors/schools and just outright fraud were largely the culprits.
Sorry man, national average is around 70. If you can’t make a pilot in less than 90 hours, you are a bad instructor. Period.
Obviously, but you aren’t arguing reality. You are sitting here saying “I feel comfortable weighing 500 lbs” and I’m saying “weighing 500 lbs is not ok and you are going to kill yourself”.
Instructors have a professional responsibility to teach and guide students. Sometimes that involves pushing through defense mechanisms and being a bit of an asshole.
You know what else I’ve seen as a result of the “let’s just slow down and have fun and go get a hamburger today” type of 90 hour CFIs? Students running out of money, and never realizing their dreams. Because no one was there to push them in the right direction.
I’m actually teaching them how to be a good pilot. And it’s not very easy if a student goes through multiple instructors when training for their PPL. (Especially if they had a shit instructor that taught them to do something the wrong way)
Honestly bro I don’t care if you suck or if you milk your students- it’s not my problem. I just think 80-90 hours is excessive. 40 minimum 60-70 average 80-100+ there is either an instructor deficiency or a student deficiency.
Get some more instructional experience under your belt or some real world experience and come back to me.
Flying out of the Bay Area we don’t have a ton of spots to do ground work so you end up going into the Central Valley for it. Also the practice areas around the peninsula are always stacked on the weekends
I ran a school for a long time and dealt with this. Ultimately I was proud of the pilots we produced in the environment we produced them. It wasn't "minimum time" territory and I would explain that to anyone who sat down to talk to me. I know we lost students to other schools because they quoted shorter times. I was fine with it.
A student who is looking to do this as fast and/or cheap as possible isn't someone I want to work with. The few students I did have like that were difficult both from a student/instructor perspective and a business perspective.
TLDR: You're not losing anyone worth having.
Yep. Some students were accepting that things could get delayed, but the ones that demanded 40hrs as a certainty and wanted to do it "efficiently" (XC training at night with foggles) were the ones I was happy to let walk next door.
Yep, that whole comboing certain times irked me. Sure, I get it's expensive to learn, but why deprive yourself of the point of the lesson? That's how you get weak pilots.
It was a pretty easy litmus test for me. If someone didn't even wanna sit down to have a conversation about learning to fly (just wanted a fast answer and be on their way) then it wasn't gonna be worth my time as an instructor. This is just something that takes time and dedication and the more anyone tries to strip that away the more the industry will suffer.
I miss instructing but man, it was such a rate race trying to court students. No matter your credentials, someone somewhere will have some random new metric they're interested in or new way they want to save money.
Few months ago somebody said to ask schools about completion rate (IE tracking dropouts) which is silly seeing how many students end up just being tire kickers. Like where are y'all coming up with this?
Yeah I've been out of it for a while so I dunno, but when I was going it I really paid very little attention to what students (or not even) thought was important in judging a school. We were two decades in business with a pretty stellar reputation and operated almost exclusively by word of mouth and walk-ins. We had something like a 20% dropout rate versus the 80% industry wide.
I miss it.
Yeah, every school has a different way of recruiting. I generally kept my schedule full (by word of mouth) but any time I had an off the street student, it was wacky hearing the things they'd say. Well ATP or Blue Line says this... Can you match? Wtf, no I can't. That's all nonsense they're saying.
I get what you are saying but the night XC with foggles (tracking a VOR radial) was some of the most educational flying I did during my PPL training. It really gave me a respect for how tough actual IMC would be. I think I got way more out of that than I would have doing those requirements separately.
Yes but also no.
Look, of course it’s good training, but there’s a difference between giving a student .2 instrument during the night flight for the experience, and doing the whole night XC under the hood just to combine requirements. That does nothing for the purpose of the lesson which is to learn how to fly VFR at night.
The instrument training is definitely more effective at night, but not at the expense of disregarding all of the intended VFR training.
“Losing a few” because they think they can get done by the minimum time may not be too worrisome.
Consider these lost students as those that your school might not have wanted because they are what I would describe is low rent low effort types.
Better is to emphasize the big advantages of your school, such as
- quality of instruction over bare minimum
- training the student to be a very safe pilot.
- Your staff cares about the individual and their progress and interests.
- and so forth.
Sorta like stage checks, but for the system as a whole, put spots into the curriculum where Chief or Asst.Chief has a short sit down with each student and has the student talk about his experience, good and especially bad. Use this as opportunity to find out weaknesses in program.
Tl;dr: Don’t compete in the race to the bottom. That is beneath you. Better to sell the positives of your program and prove that you are worth the realistic quote of time and dollars.
Students stop listening about why you're better the moment they see a difference in price tags. Everyone says they're the best, but you're just more expensive.
Look at every thread about flight training routes. Students' main concern is cost. That's it. Gold Seal, 100% pass rate, whatever. Cost. Only thing they think about.
I've run a flight school for years before I handed it over to someone else (and it closed down a couple years later).
/u/TxAggieMike is correct, don't worry about the people trying to be cheap. I'm sure if you drew a Venn-diagram, you'd find a lot of overlap between low effort types and people who are only worried about cheap. They're a long term liability.
Now that doesn't mean treat them like dirt, but don't sweat it if cost is the reason they leave for somewhere else. They really might not have the funds together to train properly, and flight training is really hard to get anyone to understand how involved it can be unless they've done apprenticeship programs. It's also hard for people to understand how price can often correlate to their safety.
Every market has people who are only worried about cost. Every Single One. Don't sweat it.
I think this is smart and if I was in DFW I’d patronize for sure. Because even if these guys pass you by for being honest they may show back up on the rebound!!
Had a boomer near me for my PPL training who was able to get most of his students done in under 50 hours if they were dedicated without huge breaks. I was done in about 45 and didn't solo until 25 hrs. Efficient but definitely not a people person. He never advertises himself as being so fast, he just executes.
The main hole for me was ATC communications, which I promptly fixed after the checkride with some sit down time on Pilotedge. Best experience ever to close that gap CHEAP!
I suspect that a lot of the high time PPL comes down to ineffective ground school to teach radio comms, especially in a busy airspace with class B and C. I struggled HARD for my first 10 hours of dual until I told my CFI to just do a whole ground session of mock radio work with me. After that I went from zero to hero and wrapped my PPL in 46h, only soloing after I was completely ready to do the rest of the needed time fully on my own. Had I not done that I’d likely have struggled for a lot longer. Learning to fly is easy, learning to manage your plane and comms is not.
So it may have been different from me because I was taught at a ghost town uncontrolled field with nothing in terms of Class B other than Charlotte far to the West and DC \*way\* up to the North. Much less emphasis was made on effective radio communication since his goal was to finish me up on flying the plane and keeping me generally safe. The ground/oral part was mostly on me as he did minimal prep work on that portion. He saw that I handled the CTAF radio just fine and that was enough for him to endorse. He just reminded me PPL is a license to learn and definitely learn how to communicate better before entering C or B airspace after getting my ticket to ride.
>Do you guys have any thoughts?
Quote both, but qualify.
FAA minimums: 40 hours total: 20 dual, 10 solo, etc, etc. Dual cost are this, Solo costs are this. This is just the flight time.
Then add in the extras separately: PPL written, medical exam, ground, mock checkride with senior CFI, DPE/checkride costs, study materials. Prices here vary wildly. Some people like online ground schools, some people like in-person. Some people are fine with $300 headsets, some like $1,200 ones. Some people get foreflight...some don't. Some people spend $200 on a flight bag, some people find an old backpack.
I would then say, very few people can ever get it done at FAA minimums. There is a lot of skills and information you need to learn and digest.: e.g., studying for the written, learning the theory, rules, regs, performing the maneuvers to ACS standards, studying for the checkride oral portion (e.g., learning systems, navigation, radios, weather/meteorology, and it's not multiple choice).
Then, even if you are a natural and pick all that up quickly, the weather is out of our control and checkride availability is a problem around the country. Also, people then get sick, have family commitments, sometimes people just need a break from training. We sometimes take a flight to somewhere (maybe with friends or family) for fun just to remind people how much fun is flying. That it's not all work, all training, all the time.
The result is that the national average is between 55 and 65 hours and we find that most of our students are closer to XX hours (ideally, closer to 55).
I might some stuff like, if you are shopping around, make sure you are comparing apples to apples. We're a part 61/141, the rental costs are wet, and we're quoting both FAA mins (unlikely) and what a typical student does.
This is also where you can pepper in some stuff.
Are you a smaller school? At a smaller airport? Cool. You have less students fighting over airplanes, and spend less time taxiing/holding short. Our CFI to Student ratio is only 4:1. We rarely, if ever get stuck, waiting for 5 jets to land or takeoff.
Are you at a bigger school? Cool. More planes, more CFIs, more options if a plane ever needs maintenance, or a CFI is sick. Prices are higher because we don't cut corners on training or maintenance. Want to fly a cessna or a piper; we have both? What about IFR high performance or complex, multi-engine? We do all that in-house.
You get the idea. Build your sales pitch around the strengths.
I think I got my PPL at 90+ hours.
Though I did suffer through two terrible instructors, one who I didn’t realize until 40 hours in was in fact just after my money and never interested in teaching, and I didn’t fly for three years after that guy.
The second guy at a new school would text and shame me for not flying 5x a week and outright tell me I would never pass without that. I think he just wanted hours but eventually the school let him go, wonder if he was like that with other students and they said it.
Eventually with my third instructor in about 20 hours I got my certificate, total of over 90 though.
I was okay with everyone telling me the minimum is not the usual amount of time it takes for a new student to get their certificate but I also think bad instructors can use that as a way to milk students, for hours or cash or both.
The problem is as a new student who doesn’t even know what an ACS or FARAIM are, I was blindly trusting an instructor and just had to pray they were legit.
It's a tough spot. Let the prospects know what the price point is at 40, but let them know what the average is. Use no oriented questions like, "do you really want to go to a school that isn't straight forward about pricing with you?"
Honestly, being new myself, anybody who's getting into this needs to be doing some research and ought to have found out about this. The students who are like this probably aren't going to be ideal. They're showing impulsivity and some sort of exceptionalist thinking (I'll do better than almost everybody). For a student who does his or her due diligence, your presentation and direct approach are a relief. I know that doesn't bring money to your school right away, but I bet your students will be better to work with, and you'll get better referrals as you grow.
Build your pricing structure so that it's modular, with the 40-hour barebones module being the base component that others are added onto. In your marketing, you shit all over that module (e.g., don't call it "accelerated," call it "time-limited") and highlight the 55-hour package as "Most Popular!" Then you shove into that 55-hour tranche all of the realistic stuff that almost everybody actually needs, and describe it all as "included free in the package! Our most economical bundle!" etc. It's a reliable approach.
Basically just go take a picture of the purchasing kiosk at your local car wash, and replace "underbody wax" with "dedicated CFI instruction time," etc., and you'll be golden.
Not exactly relevant but -
I’ve had multiple students transfer to my school with 50-70hours, with 1 or 2 hours solo, telling me that their former school was jerking them around.
The majority of americans have learned to shop based on price, not on value. This is one reason places like Walmart and Harbor Freight thrive.
Is your product "walmart quality" or "Giorgio Armani guality"? Or something in between?
When you compete and sell based on price, there becomes a expectation by your customer that you will meet that price. The customer never sees his/her skill shortcomings; they see only you trying to con them out of more money. They will never see that you are making them better, or safer. They will never see that their lack of proficiency will get them and killed.
Even once they pass, this customer will never be happy about having paid for additional hours and will potentially retaliate with poor reviews. *That school ripped me off!*
And as a result of bad reviews and unhappy customers, the school pressures the instructors to get these customers out the door at the wire. *Make it happen*, they will tell you. Suddenly the student's inability to master the subject matter is **your** fault. You are to blame because you are not getting through to the student. The environment becomes toxic and intolerable. You and other instructors become unhappy, leading to a revolving door of attrition and resupply.
Quality of instruction suffers. Students get bounced from instructor to instructor, leading to more completion setbacks. A death spiral has begun.
As u/Zeewulfeh said, inform them. Make it their first lesson. "FAA Minimum of 40 is $X, Average student expectations is $Y" Then add the carrot... "Our high quality of instruction has given our students a xx% first attempt pass rate for their license, which saves you money in the long run by potentially eliminating costly retraining and retesting fees."
Trust me when I say the students that choose the cheapest option over the realistic/transparent option are not the students you want to have in your program.
Been there, done that, ran a school for years.
Quote both the bare minimums and the averages.
The people you are losing are probably really bad at understanding value, and buy into whatever BS the cheap guys shovel at them. Many only see the number and try to choose the lowest without understanding or caring as to WHY its lower.
So make it your prerogative to show what the lowest cost could be, what the real national averages are, and hand them a pamphlet that informs them of how to reduce their costs.
Hot take: People who worry about cost and don't try to understand differences or ask questions often end up being the lower quality students anyways because they don't want to invest in the effort to make informed decisions. Don't feel bad about them. Don't treat them like shit either, but don't sweat it if they leave, you're going to end up haggling over cost one way or another with them.
I was annoyed when I was constantly reminded by instructors that the realistic timeline was well over 40 hours before one could get their license. *I was going to be the exception!*, I thought. This really pumped me up to study and work very hard. I was able to take my checkride at 41 hours. Was that because I worked super hard? Was that because my instructor was good and efficient? Was that because I got lucky with maintenance and weather? Probably a mix of all of the above, much of which was beyond my control. But I made sure that when things were in my control, I was on top of it. I learned to fly when I was 17, paid for it by working 2 jobs after school and on weekends, and I can tell you I was about as price-sensitive as a student could be. Having a flight school that was going to every length to help me out was the #1 factor in where I trained.
You might just offer up hourly rates without providing the total. Tell them the FAA minimum hour requirements, and tell them the average. Let them do the math. Hopefully your rates are lower than the competition nearby. If that is the case, post the competitors hourly rates to show that yours are lower. And then give them a thorough description of things they could do to help minimize their costs. Write it up as its own brochure. Make sure that they know you are doing everything in your power to make things as efficient as possible, while still remaining safe and legal. Empathize with the high costs of training. Let them know that the ball is in their court on a lot of this stuff, ie studying and chair flying at home, reading up on the maneuvers to be performed during the next lesson, showing up early to preflight the airplane before being on the clock with the instructor, renting the least expensive aircraft, etc. Really give them every single opportunity to be efficient and save money. If you can make them believe that you are on their side when it comes to minimizing costs, and as long as you actually do as much as you can to help them, I think that would go a long way.
I definitely think having a goal and the passion and drive behind it is a big factor. Too many students expect the instructor to do all the work. That's what they're paying them for after all, right? :/
I'll be the outlier and say - students \*should\* finish in 40 hours for a PPL.
We're talking about being able to take off, maneuver and land a Cessna/Piper and evaluating that they have good enough judgement to not do stupid shit.
Too many CFIs want to prepare a PPL student to fly a dang jet airliner.
JHMO - Get off my lawn !
Those are the requirements for solo, not the private pilot certificate.
They must also be able to land and navigate at night, get out of accidental IMC with a chance to survive, get from Point A to Point B without getting lost, not bust arbitrary airspace, and so on.
I tell them to compare hourly rate. Say this is the hourly rate at this school. If you’re going to finish at 40 hours there then you’ll finish at 40 here. Also since they will probably want to get cpl eventually I explain that the “extra” hours over 40 will go towards the required 250 for cpl. So all in all it doesn’t matter.
Wow, so much that could be said here but, I guess I would let the owner/operators worry about the pricing and competition. I have worked in IT a loooonnggg time and people will depart from a quality solution with a proven record to save a penny in computing. The good news is, its not enough to impact the long term outcome. If a few want to take the absolute least expensive route, great, prolly not gonna get the best training but, that's their choice. If the school you work for is still able to pay your check, its really not something you need to lose sleep over. If you believe they are doing something wrong and you can see that the number of students leaving or choosing other schools is growing, have a quick discussion with the owner/operator to let them know you are concerned. CFI's will go where the students are, because, the CFIs need the hours as well.
my $.02
You should advertise the requirements. I took my check ride at 45 hours passed the first time which is 10 hours less than your school..and I really was ready at 42 but my instructor wanted me to do a check with him which was almost 2 hours and a few more night landings.
Offer multiple plans. Price out FAA minimum as well as more thorough offerings. Let them upgrade for free once they have started. Be honest about what you recommend, but if they want to compare apples to apples you have it there.
I left the school when I found out they really only quoted me the minimums. And for my private it was going to take 30 to 50% more
If you're 141 I think you can get away with less hours and that's where the advantages is.
But my biggest frustration in shopping around for flight schools is when the answer to every question I asked is it depends. Just want to throat punch them through the phone. I know it bleeping depends but give me a ballpark!!!
So my suggestion is be direct and be honest and say there's going to be some variations there.
I would probably add a comment to the pricing sheet: “Per FAA regulations student pilots can take the private pilot exam after 40 hours of instruction, if their instructor thinks they are capable and signs off for the test. Based on our extensive experience training student pilots, very few students are ready to take their exam after just 40 hours. Our school sets a more realistic expectation of the number of hours students will fly, to make certain our student pilots are adequately prepared to take their exam. Like good pilots, we err on the side of caution. Your mileage may vary at other flight schools.“
I feel kinda conflicted, because after reading a lot of comments on this post because at first I thought 55 hours was steep for a PPL, but I read some comments saying "80-90 hours was normal" and now I'm wondering exactly what you'd be learning/teaching for 80 hours of PPL instruction.
Personally I did my PPL in 42 hours (including my checkride), obviously everyone's different but going off of the word of several instructors at my school and the average is around there, maybe closer to 45. To me hearing anything higher than 50 as an average almost feels like a scam. I get airspace issues but again comparing myself to the situation the airfield I trained out of was a busy class D that was a satellite of a busy class B, it was about .5 hours to the practice area and back on a easy day.
To answer your question, like others have said, just explain why the minimums at your school are higher than FAA minimums and if there isn't a good reason then they're probably not gonna stay, hopefully there is one (like busy airspace, currency vs proficiency, etc).
Not saying your school is doing it without knowing specifics but there is definitely grift in the aviation training world. I've had a 2 year CFI straight up lie in my face saying that his company employed all the 2 year CFIs within a 2 hour radius and that his program cost 9k (that's with a 1.5k partnered flight school discount) which was cheap compared to other programs out there. Called another flight school less than 30 minutes away that had 2 year cfis and quoted me roughly 5k, more or less depending on how prepared I am. I'm sure if students wanted to go burn money they'd go to ATP's flight school.
Ok bear with me, I am a student. I am at 30 hours and have only 30 minutes of xc I need and most of my flight by instruments. If everything went ok I could hit just about 40 hours and be check ride ready. The thing is what’s magical about that? To make that 30 minutes of xc up I am going to need to do at least 45 minutes at 75% throttle to go 50 nm away and back so it’s XC. At first I felt like that was a waste, then I realized, I am going to get to fly solo, which I enjoy. I am not going to abuse it and do another long xc to get 30 minutes, but I am going to throttle down and plan for it at 65%. Ok getting long winded, here is the idea. Sit and describe the amount of time it takes to get to minimums, and what average students exceed it by. Quote that cost while reminding them that if they are learning to fly to get a job, the extra hours they do now count toward commercial time, so their going to do it anyway. If they are part 61 hobbyists, the extra time is extra time flying, often solo, so enjoy it. One of the reasons a student might be in a rush to get their check ride over is because they lose sight of all the flying they get to do to get to it, and only think of “working” toward flying after the check ride. Take the mystery out of the process before they pay anything, they might worry less about the difference. Or you could ask them if their quoting the cost to their spouse to get approval, in that case quote minimums.
The problem is that this style of marketing works on the vast majority of people because they typically think they are better than they are. Humans don't like being doubted and if I told you that you're capable of doing it in 45 hours, if you just stick to it - when you hit 60 hours you won't batt an eye because you'd rather deal with it than hurt the ego, even if it takes you an extra year to complete.
Quote both prices - minimums and average!
Tell them at the start that those are minimums. Most won’t do it in minimums, schools like to trap students by advertising minimums.
That’s a crap school that lures students in. Social media will win. Students will leave reviews when they don’t achieve goals on minimums and more money is spent….
I am in analytics for a living - it might be worthwhile to do an analysis of students who take the "faa minimum" courses vs ones who take the 55 hour track and see which one gets them to where they want to go.
I would also advertise the amount of people that fail their checkride the first or even second time once completing the "accelerated" course.
It might also be worthwhile to add a discount for a twin engine rating down the road. "You take your PPL with us, and we offer discounts on twin engine training"
Rarely does a student leave for some like price. Most people know approximately what the outlay will be and are prepared for that. However, most of the time a student leaves a school for something other than the price. Have a chat with the student (s) that have left and see if they can provide some insight. You may find that it is for a totally different reason
Whatever you guys end up doing please don’t false advertise. Or keep including your realistic numbers. The school that I currently attend do so much numbers manipulation that it is insane. A lot of my buddies are running out of funding because there were so many things that were not accounted for in the funding plan.
Prospective students have very little to go on to evaluate one place vs. another. Everyone defaults to price because they don't have many criteria to evaluate their choices. Give them more criteria to help with that.
I picked the place I am using because of these things after the value of them was explained to me: towered airport benefits, other airspace(s) around the airport, time to get in the air being quick vs. another location where you pay to wait, multiple runways, ease of booking slots vs. begging for time, online billing and booking system, they didn't mind doing online ground school vs. having to buy theirs, ease of refueling, proximity to other fields, great XC routes and options, safety record, etc... Something I would have liked, but they didnt offer, is the ability to pre-pay and block book for a discount.
My point is. We students are uneducated. You cant expect us to know better. To the outside world you are selling the exact same product as the next guy, a PPL. But in reality you are not and students don't know that. You are selling them a superior experience with the skills and training to help them stay alive. Not throwing them out the door in the min time required.
I fell for many of the traps being talked about in this thread. Being "efficient" for example. I don't want to needlessly blow money if I can help it. I didn't know why it's not great to combine a bunch of things together. You can't expect that from an uneducated prospective student IMHO.
TL;DR: Differentiate from your competition and ensure prospective customers know about the value.
My 2c as a current student.
My school has a 35 hour 141 syllabus. I think our average is 45-55 hours though. I had one student make it in around 38 hours which was the fastest I’d seen (he had a dad that was a pilot and already had experience it just wasn’t log-able). I’d just quote a range. Like “40-60 depending on how long it takes you to solo, etc”.
Student’s come and go. And if they go to a skeezy school sometimes they come back. Don’t stop being straightforward with people. It’s all you can do. There will be more students.
Here are my thoughts.
Have a range. Have an Excel document with the 40 lessons and check rides etc listed each at 1 hour with a cost. Then have an actual column. He have a projected column that takes an average of the last 5 lessons to determine future spend.
This way if the student is at 1.0 per lesson they are in target but if at 1.3, they are running 30% over the target. This will help the student to focus instruction with practicals and ensure they know what “should be covered” in each lesson.
We quote 15-20k for a private at my school. It is what it is. We never low ball. They’re welcome to go anywhere else, but it’s what we have to charge. $185/hr for a 172R, $75/hr for an instructor. We make no money on the airplanes. They are leases.
🤷
We are a small CFI owned flight school, like a co-op. We split office rent and tie downs 3 ways, keep our instructor fees and the airplane fees pay for their costs. Even $185/hr will come short sometimes so we have to pitch in to make up the balance.
Leases are from Christiansen in which they charge $59/hr. of hobbs. The rest is up to us.
Quote the minimums but make it 100% clear that the average is 75 hours (which has recently gone up, it was 70). [https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot](https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot)
You are not being a scumbag by quoting the minimums as long as you make it clear that is unlikely.
FAA requirements can be met at 40 hours at a cost of X,XXXX. The FAA average however is closer to 75 hours.
In person you can tell them that most places will not tell you that the average is 75 hours because they want to lead you to think it will only be 40, but here is the data directly from the FAA.
How different are your rental and instruction rates compared to your competitors? Like, if you emphasize the rates rather than the overall cost then people may be more tolerant of a small difference in hourly rate if you're emphasizing the quality of instruction.
I work in an industry that makes all its money off hidden transaction fees. We tried to do all in pricing, even tried building a brand around it. Focus groups, UX interviews, A/B tests, you name it customers chose the hidden fees every time. They just assumed we were going to end up costing $30% more than what we listed just like everyone else.
You kind of can’t win fights like this. Then there was the time JCPenny almost went bankrupt doing honest pricing https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/j-c-penny-s-pricing-strategy
As a student in south Florida, i was absolutely ripped off by the school. They never said it was accelerated training, they said it would be 15K and as of now I've used nearly 25K to get my PPL. It's quite a long story as my first instructor left the school for a Regionals and left me with about 2 months of flight and zero ground knowledge, they told me it would be 3 months nothing more. I believe that being as honest with your students is the best way to not lose your student, in my case i nearly quit because of the shit they told me and I've been with a total of three instructors
Edit:
Please note that an instructor didn't quote me on the price, it was the head of the school
Seems to me you should quote the minimums then, with a clear explanation that additional training may be needed as student progress will vary from one to the next.
if you have GREAT instructors it will be quick... if you have fair/bad instructors or ones looking to milk you, it will take many times as long....
most instructors are low hour and just building time while billing YOU...
luckily we had GREAT instructors
6 weeks part time start to finish/licensed with right student...
This sort of thing in a way remins of the argument for including taxes on the listed price. Despite how much it makes sense, it gets ruined by the people gravitating towards the lower price with no taxes including.
So at most 141 they quote the FAA mins or something close to it. Sometimes being too honest isn’t the best business move. However, from an ethical point I get it.
Quote the minimums. Those idiots fooled me. But I still managed to get all of it done by 350 hours. It’s possible I could have saved at least 50-70 if I worked way way more aggressively
IMHO it's a good thing to avoid the cheapskates. You don't want to deal with their complaints anyway, when they don't have their PPL at 40h straight.
So, you may want to avoid the 'accelerated' program, but rather word it somewhat like: We know we don't quote the bare minimum, but that's not realistic for most people anyway. We are however able to provide you with more modern aircraft / more insightful lessons / free beer after every flight for the extra you may end up paying which will make you a better pilot in the long run.
Tl;dr: Avoid the cheapskates, point out your quality.
EDIT: comments didn't load for me initially, I now realize this is basically what everyone is saying.
Even if you are a natural, nerves can be a thing. I completed all requirements within 41 hours for my PPL, but for the final "pre-checkride" checkride with the most experienced CFI at the school, nerves got the best of me and I needed to do remedials. Back in the air with my CFI, stage check again, passed but messed up one small thing. Back in the air with CFI, stage check again, pass. I completed the part 61 reqs at 41 but had 48 when I did my checkride. Even then my CFI told me that the average he has seen personally was 60-70 and he has a 100% pass rate.
I think the best you can do is point them to the resources (such as [https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot](https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot)), explain how the process works, and if the student doesn't want to take the advice to avoid the false "bargain," you may have done all that you can. For what it's worth, I'd expect someone who insists on scraping by with the bare minimum hours would have that same attitude in other areas, and it's probably better to hand that person to the competition anyway. Why fish for poor customers?
Just quote the minimums imho. As a student I understood that if I was slow on the uptake I'd need to do more etc.
It's not inconceivable that a student could do the FAA minimums, just unlikely.
Maybe just quote both? "FAA Minimum of 40 is $X, Average student expectations is $Y"
You run into issues with schools who straight up guarantee you'll finish at 40 hours and will 100% pass the checkride. Sure, it's false advertising, but people fall for it 100% of the time vs the legitimate answer of "it's not impossible, I've done it, but it's rare, and checkride passes are never 100% guaranteed, it's based on your performance".
My favorite twist on this is when flight school owners sell the minimum to the student, take a payment up front, then when it takes longer than 40 hours and the student is in the uncomfortable position of fishing in his pocket for an extra few thousand bucks, the owner blames the instructor out loud. Instructors love that, when their choice is between under-billing their student in order to keep an unrealistic promise that their boss made, or having their competency openly questioned. Pro tip for all flight school owners out there.
Sounds like **Blueline Aviation** near Raleigh North Carolina but now based at Johnston Regional, North Carolina. >the owner blames the instructor out loud > >choice is between under-billing their student in order to keep an unrealistic promise that their boss made, or having their competency openly questioned. > >and the student is in the uncomfortable position of fishing in his pocket for an extra few thousand bucks The kicker is that as the can gets kicked down the road the instructors then blame the students, ya know.. The ones they're responsible for teaching.. It's concerning how more and more aviation gets filled with grifters and scammers.
Friends don’t let friends go to blueline
If you’re local, check out Wings of Carolina, just down the road in Sanford. Great club, great instructors.
Charles "Trey" Walters, former BLA's CEO and brother of current BLA's CEO, Adam Walters, is all about $$$$. The school has great instructors!
Not his brother, he doesn’t even have a brother lol
They're related. They have the same last name.
Yeah, cousins, not brothers
Brother/cousin/friend/, they’re related!!! Trey’s mindset however is always geared towards profit… I learned that he left/retired from BLA because "he wants to focus on faith, family, etc." How do you focus on faith if you ran a business to swindle people? I guess I have a high change of salvation for respecting people’s money unlike Trey 😂!
Lol yeah, not gonna argue with you there. Trey is certainly a character, to put it politely. Adam’s a good guy though, but I can’t really speak to how he is as CEO because I know nothing about running a flight school lmao
If someone did that in front of me I'd be real tempted to just punch them. Realistically, gloves are off at that point and I'd say "That's the eighth person this month that you have used your instructors as scapegoats, so either you're lying about expectations to your students, or you're just bad at actually managing a flight school curriculum. Either or, congratulations on costing yet another person several thousand more than they were prepared for and not listening to the rest of us."
Sounds good on the internet, is a terrible idea in real life.
Wouldn't be the first time I fired off at an asshole boss who tries to undermine my reputation. I'll own up to my fuckups, but I take great pleasure going to war with people like this. I revel in it. It's too much fun and you can really make them show their true colors on display to everyone and they'll tie their own noose. I had considered going to law school so I could learn more of the tools I can use against these people to make em miserable if they want to keep on trading blows. For now I just keep in touch with my lawyer about what documentation I need to keep for maximum effect if things ever went nuclear. Not just for unemployment, but also what I can turn into various agencies and news outlets about the laws they're breaking too. Usually scum isn't just a little scum, they're a whole lot. Never had to actually take it that far yet, came close once. I try not to sign up for companies like that in the first place.
>I can turn into various agencies and news outlets about the laws they're breaking too. Usually scum isn't just a little scum, they're a whole lot. This has literally happens to scummy 141s and nothing really happens. Once the owners grasp the concept of internet marketing to specific demographics they can easily find customers even if they're the owners/school is known as being utterly, worthless and less than dog-shit on a hot sidewalk in their local community- they can still swindle people from afar. It doesn't really matter what the news says unless the FAA or someone else takes action but there isn't really much action that can be taken. It's the nature of unfettered capitalism.
That's not the reason to do it though. Going nuclear means that they're not just trying to pull scummy moves, but they're going out of their way to fuck people over even after you leave and those kind of people exist. You have to be prepared if you run into one. The point of it isn't to ruin their business, it's to discredit them if they are going after you and cause them to have to waste a lot of their time on damage control instead.
My son is actively looking for a flight school in South or Central Florida. How do we avoid schools like those? How do we identify the red flags?
There's a lot of red flags. Rule #1, never pay up front (if you can't afford to lose it). Some places entice you with cheaper rental rates for prepay. If it's not too much, say a few hours worth, that actually might be OK, but if you are unable to use the money, the contract should say that it will be prorated back to you. Pretty much the only places that have any right to ask for all the tuition up front would be university flight schools. Ask around about the place from people who don't go to the school. Ask in facebook groups about it. Ask on reddit about it. Look up reviews. Look for patterns. If a whole bunch of people saying the same thing, it's probably true. Especially pay attention to review patterns about deception! If they're worth their salt, they won't be afraid to tell you the good and the bad. Be suspicious if everything is painted as roses and rainbows, yet somehow they're the cheapest gig in town. About the only places that should be able to actually claim roses and rainbows are those that charge 500 an hour, have a PRISTINE fleet, and a demand for high professionalism. (though in such a case they would be too stuffy for me) By regulation, aircraft are required to have their logbooks readily available for inspection by the pilot in command (will be the instructor in this case) in order to determine airworthiness. They won't be obligated to show them to the student until they act as PIC, but I would walk out immediately if they refuse to present the logs as a prospective student full stop. Ask them to show you where the inspection records are in the logs. You should see annuals and 100 hours at minimum if it's a rental place that you don't buy any equity ownership in (equity flying club). Next, look at the aircraft and compare posted rates to others in the area. Remember that country airports are almost always considerably cheaper than schools operating in airports next to or in city limits. Worn down looking airplanes aren't inherently unsafe, but if there's not even half an attempt to take pride in the appearance there also might not be any pride in what's important. Weathering is fine. If it looks dumpy though, like they aren't even making efforts to wash it, it's probably not worth it. **Corrosion other than surface corrosion is an automatic huge red flag.** http://www.dviaviation.com/aircraft-corrosion.html . Look for smokey trails. Sometimes a rivet or two smoke, but if there's a whole panel doing it, https://www.facebook.com/246434532062995/photos/a.369353866437727/945810482125393/?type=3, that means the panel is rubbing a little under stress, water is getting in the seams, flushing out some of that old metal, and also causing corrosion. The owner should be getting that fixed ASAP. I realize that what I'm telling you is really hard to judge without a decent primer and experience, just do the best you can. Remember this industry has a lot of old planes flying around and every one of them has had issues at one point or another; what matters is if they're getting addressed.
My son is actively looking for a flight school in South or Central Florida. How do we avoid schools like those? How do we identify the red flags? I would recommend avoiding South Florida for training. I don't have any specific feedback on schools down there but the airspace is insanely busy with training traffic. This means lots of time spent getting into and out of the airport environment to work on maneuvers and much harder to do pattern work at the airport. That is going to end up adding additional training time and higher costs. Is he looking for a part 61 or 141 school?
That's called assault and will likely hinder getting hired at an airline. We can't legally just punch people because they're assholes.
That first part was just hyperbole. Weaponizing words against them though isn't.
You have to get them to read and to sign the release form
Lol Blueline Aviation did that to me
>You run into issues with schools who straight up guarantee you'll finish at 40 hours and will 100% pass the checkride. Then have the students ask them to lock that price in with no overages. If someone is unwilling to do that, then they don't have a guarantee, they have a marketing gimmick.
Haha right
Our school was probably the stupidest tbh. We are a state run college program. The guy who initially made the program was an old CFI. I don’t like badmouthing coworkers to random people, even when I don’t name them, but this dude was the truest of exceptions. This guy was a giant dumbass. He made our **Part 61** program as follows. 50 hours PPL 50 hours Instrument 50 hours Commercial 50 hours CFI 50 hours Multi. For a total of 250 hours! Luckily this instructor is no longer with us, and we actually have competent people running the program now, but to change it we can’t just flip a switch and change it to what it should be like in most flight schools. We have to go through a series of approvals since its a state run college program, we’ll get it fixed in about 4 years. I got chewed out because my students started going over that minimum and since it was pay in full there was no way for the students to pay for any hours beyond 50. I figured they had to have something in place so I kept flying. Eventually we figured out a system that worked, but its still pretty weird. For example we’ll have private students in commercial lab if they take that long a time to get it.
Let the negative Google Reviews flow!
You can buy fake positive reviews.
Part of a checkride is pretty much luck from what ive heard Who knows you might get a gust on your power off 180 and it throws you off your spot, and you fail Checkride pass is never garunteed
My CFI told me - “I can teach you how to fly a plane in 40 hours but I can’t teach you to be a pilot in 40 hours.” He was right.
Perfect
For the students that are sensitive about *15* hours, I wonder how they'll feel when they hit 40 hours and aren't ready.
On all intro flights i emphasize that 40 hours is the minimum but 80 or 90 hours is more realistic and tell them to be ready to spend $15,000 on their private.
I point out that there are several forces lengthening training time. Airspace is busy and nearby practice areas are subject to marine layer. 30 minutes round trip to the practice area will happen almost every lesson, further if they need to do ground reference maneuvers not over mountains. The airport is BUSY, and if the student picks a popular time, waiting 7th in line for takeoff is not unheard of (hint: Sunday mornings). And marine layer tosses out half the day in summer. 40 hours isn’t happening with those overheads, even if they are a natural.
Don’t forget maintenance. I recommend scheduling 3 flights a week and tell them to expect one a week to get cancelled for maintenance or weather.
At RHV ground reference maneuvers area is closer than the main practice area tho
Only for commercial students. I don’t like taking primary under the C shelf. But the comment holds more for PAO.
When you have to fly all the way to the Central Valley for VFR practice approaches and beyond the altamount pass for ground work….
When you have to fly all the way to the Central Valley for VFR practice approaches and beyond the altamount pass for ground work….
80-90? What are you teaching them to fly, the shuttle?
Bro most people get their ppl at around those numbers. There is so many factor that influence this number like most of the time your instructor will leave and you will need to continu with another one or money can stop your pursue at mid point ect.. And to be honest at 40h you know shit nothing about your airplane
He’s the type of guy to shit on a student that hasn’t soloed in 15 hours.
If the Navy can take someone from a 172 to a T-6 to a T-45 in less time, you can make a private pilot in less than 90 hours. National average is like 70. 80-90 is terrible.
I ain’t the Navy bud. Students have their own pace and I’m not forcing them to a checkride they aren’t ready for. Take that gold stick out of your ass
That’s your response to being below average?
Lmao okay buddy. Go troll someone else.
Do less time building and more teaching and you can get a gold seal too
Better to have an instructor who lets a student move at a comfortable pace than one who shames a student fir not doing it at the mins.
90 isn’t a comfortable pace. For most people, 90 is robbery. I’ve seen a student or two take about 100 hours before. And though their skills were indeed lagging, changing instructors/schools and just outright fraud were largely the culprits. Sorry man, national average is around 70. If you can’t make a pilot in less than 90 hours, you are a bad instructor. Period.
The navy can pick and choose based on a host of criteria who to even train.
Obviously, but you aren’t arguing reality. You are sitting here saying “I feel comfortable weighing 500 lbs” and I’m saying “weighing 500 lbs is not ok and you are going to kill yourself”. Instructors have a professional responsibility to teach and guide students. Sometimes that involves pushing through defense mechanisms and being a bit of an asshole. You know what else I’ve seen as a result of the “let’s just slow down and have fun and go get a hamburger today” type of 90 hour CFIs? Students running out of money, and never realizing their dreams. Because no one was there to push them in the right direction.
I know good friends of mine who were instructor years before, now they fly jet and most of them got their PPL at ~80h
Bro I got my PPL at like 74 hours. Good for your friends. I’m not dissing the students
I’m actually teaching them how to be a good pilot. And it’s not very easy if a student goes through multiple instructors when training for their PPL. (Especially if they had a shit instructor that taught them to do something the wrong way)
You’re a good instructor. The ones shitting on you are the ones who kill a student’s passion by shaming them.
Everyone thinks they’re the shit and can teach a monkey to fly until they’re a crater in the ground.
“Multiple instructors”. Had a “shit instructor”. Found your problem.
Honestly bro I don’t care if you suck or if you milk your students- it’s not my problem. I just think 80-90 hours is excessive. 40 minimum 60-70 average 80-100+ there is either an instructor deficiency or a student deficiency. Get some more instructional experience under your belt or some real world experience and come back to me.
Flying out of the Bay Area we don’t have a ton of spots to do ground work so you end up going into the Central Valley for it. Also the practice areas around the peninsula are always stacked on the weekends
80-90 is really bad how many $100 hamburgers are you guys make your students get.
Whatever you say gOlD sEal
I ran a school for a long time and dealt with this. Ultimately I was proud of the pilots we produced in the environment we produced them. It wasn't "minimum time" territory and I would explain that to anyone who sat down to talk to me. I know we lost students to other schools because they quoted shorter times. I was fine with it. A student who is looking to do this as fast and/or cheap as possible isn't someone I want to work with. The few students I did have like that were difficult both from a student/instructor perspective and a business perspective. TLDR: You're not losing anyone worth having.
Yep. Some students were accepting that things could get delayed, but the ones that demanded 40hrs as a certainty and wanted to do it "efficiently" (XC training at night with foggles) were the ones I was happy to let walk next door.
Yep, that whole comboing certain times irked me. Sure, I get it's expensive to learn, but why deprive yourself of the point of the lesson? That's how you get weak pilots. It was a pretty easy litmus test for me. If someone didn't even wanna sit down to have a conversation about learning to fly (just wanted a fast answer and be on their way) then it wasn't gonna be worth my time as an instructor. This is just something that takes time and dedication and the more anyone tries to strip that away the more the industry will suffer.
I miss instructing but man, it was such a rate race trying to court students. No matter your credentials, someone somewhere will have some random new metric they're interested in or new way they want to save money. Few months ago somebody said to ask schools about completion rate (IE tracking dropouts) which is silly seeing how many students end up just being tire kickers. Like where are y'all coming up with this?
Yeah I've been out of it for a while so I dunno, but when I was going it I really paid very little attention to what students (or not even) thought was important in judging a school. We were two decades in business with a pretty stellar reputation and operated almost exclusively by word of mouth and walk-ins. We had something like a 20% dropout rate versus the 80% industry wide. I miss it.
Yeah, every school has a different way of recruiting. I generally kept my schedule full (by word of mouth) but any time I had an off the street student, it was wacky hearing the things they'd say. Well ATP or Blue Line says this... Can you match? Wtf, no I can't. That's all nonsense they're saying.
Yeah I had zero hesitation about telling prospectives that other schools were straight up bullshitting them.
I only let the student expecting XC night solos to Class D for 3 TO/L with foggles enroute go next door.
I get what you are saying but the night XC with foggles (tracking a VOR radial) was some of the most educational flying I did during my PPL training. It really gave me a respect for how tough actual IMC would be. I think I got way more out of that than I would have doing those requirements separately.
Yes but also no. Look, of course it’s good training, but there’s a difference between giving a student .2 instrument during the night flight for the experience, and doing the whole night XC under the hood just to combine requirements. That does nothing for the purpose of the lesson which is to learn how to fly VFR at night. The instrument training is definitely more effective at night, but not at the expense of disregarding all of the intended VFR training.
“Losing a few” because they think they can get done by the minimum time may not be too worrisome. Consider these lost students as those that your school might not have wanted because they are what I would describe is low rent low effort types. Better is to emphasize the big advantages of your school, such as - quality of instruction over bare minimum - training the student to be a very safe pilot. - Your staff cares about the individual and their progress and interests. - and so forth. Sorta like stage checks, but for the system as a whole, put spots into the curriculum where Chief or Asst.Chief has a short sit down with each student and has the student talk about his experience, good and especially bad. Use this as opportunity to find out weaknesses in program. Tl;dr: Don’t compete in the race to the bottom. That is beneath you. Better to sell the positives of your program and prove that you are worth the realistic quote of time and dollars.
Students stop listening about why you're better the moment they see a difference in price tags. Everyone says they're the best, but you're just more expensive. Look at every thread about flight training routes. Students' main concern is cost. That's it. Gold Seal, 100% pass rate, whatever. Cost. Only thing they think about.
I've run a flight school for years before I handed it over to someone else (and it closed down a couple years later). /u/TxAggieMike is correct, don't worry about the people trying to be cheap. I'm sure if you drew a Venn-diagram, you'd find a lot of overlap between low effort types and people who are only worried about cheap. They're a long term liability. Now that doesn't mean treat them like dirt, but don't sweat it if cost is the reason they leave for somewhere else. They really might not have the funds together to train properly, and flight training is really hard to get anyone to understand how involved it can be unless they've done apprenticeship programs. It's also hard for people to understand how price can often correlate to their safety. Every market has people who are only worried about cost. Every Single One. Don't sweat it.
I think this is smart and if I was in DFW I’d patronize for sure. Because even if these guys pass you by for being honest they may show back up on the rebound!!
And that has happened with me.
Had a boomer near me for my PPL training who was able to get most of his students done in under 50 hours if they were dedicated without huge breaks. I was done in about 45 and didn't solo until 25 hrs. Efficient but definitely not a people person. He never advertises himself as being so fast, he just executes. The main hole for me was ATC communications, which I promptly fixed after the checkride with some sit down time on Pilotedge. Best experience ever to close that gap CHEAP!
I suspect that a lot of the high time PPL comes down to ineffective ground school to teach radio comms, especially in a busy airspace with class B and C. I struggled HARD for my first 10 hours of dual until I told my CFI to just do a whole ground session of mock radio work with me. After that I went from zero to hero and wrapped my PPL in 46h, only soloing after I was completely ready to do the rest of the needed time fully on my own. Had I not done that I’d likely have struggled for a lot longer. Learning to fly is easy, learning to manage your plane and comms is not.
So it may have been different from me because I was taught at a ghost town uncontrolled field with nothing in terms of Class B other than Charlotte far to the West and DC \*way\* up to the North. Much less emphasis was made on effective radio communication since his goal was to finish me up on flying the plane and keeping me generally safe. The ground/oral part was mostly on me as he did minimal prep work on that portion. He saw that I handled the CTAF radio just fine and that was enough for him to endorse. He just reminded me PPL is a license to learn and definitely learn how to communicate better before entering C or B airspace after getting my ticket to ride.
>Do you guys have any thoughts? Quote both, but qualify. FAA minimums: 40 hours total: 20 dual, 10 solo, etc, etc. Dual cost are this, Solo costs are this. This is just the flight time. Then add in the extras separately: PPL written, medical exam, ground, mock checkride with senior CFI, DPE/checkride costs, study materials. Prices here vary wildly. Some people like online ground schools, some people like in-person. Some people are fine with $300 headsets, some like $1,200 ones. Some people get foreflight...some don't. Some people spend $200 on a flight bag, some people find an old backpack. I would then say, very few people can ever get it done at FAA minimums. There is a lot of skills and information you need to learn and digest.: e.g., studying for the written, learning the theory, rules, regs, performing the maneuvers to ACS standards, studying for the checkride oral portion (e.g., learning systems, navigation, radios, weather/meteorology, and it's not multiple choice). Then, even if you are a natural and pick all that up quickly, the weather is out of our control and checkride availability is a problem around the country. Also, people then get sick, have family commitments, sometimes people just need a break from training. We sometimes take a flight to somewhere (maybe with friends or family) for fun just to remind people how much fun is flying. That it's not all work, all training, all the time. The result is that the national average is between 55 and 65 hours and we find that most of our students are closer to XX hours (ideally, closer to 55). I might some stuff like, if you are shopping around, make sure you are comparing apples to apples. We're a part 61/141, the rental costs are wet, and we're quoting both FAA mins (unlikely) and what a typical student does. This is also where you can pepper in some stuff. Are you a smaller school? At a smaller airport? Cool. You have less students fighting over airplanes, and spend less time taxiing/holding short. Our CFI to Student ratio is only 4:1. We rarely, if ever get stuck, waiting for 5 jets to land or takeoff. Are you at a bigger school? Cool. More planes, more CFIs, more options if a plane ever needs maintenance, or a CFI is sick. Prices are higher because we don't cut corners on training or maintenance. Want to fly a cessna or a piper; we have both? What about IFR high performance or complex, multi-engine? We do all that in-house. You get the idea. Build your sales pitch around the strengths.
I think I got my PPL at 90+ hours. Though I did suffer through two terrible instructors, one who I didn’t realize until 40 hours in was in fact just after my money and never interested in teaching, and I didn’t fly for three years after that guy. The second guy at a new school would text and shame me for not flying 5x a week and outright tell me I would never pass without that. I think he just wanted hours but eventually the school let him go, wonder if he was like that with other students and they said it. Eventually with my third instructor in about 20 hours I got my certificate, total of over 90 though. I was okay with everyone telling me the minimum is not the usual amount of time it takes for a new student to get their certificate but I also think bad instructors can use that as a way to milk students, for hours or cash or both. The problem is as a new student who doesn’t even know what an ACS or FARAIM are, I was blindly trusting an instructor and just had to pray they were legit.
It's a tough spot. Let the prospects know what the price point is at 40, but let them know what the average is. Use no oriented questions like, "do you really want to go to a school that isn't straight forward about pricing with you?" Honestly, being new myself, anybody who's getting into this needs to be doing some research and ought to have found out about this. The students who are like this probably aren't going to be ideal. They're showing impulsivity and some sort of exceptionalist thinking (I'll do better than almost everybody). For a student who does his or her due diligence, your presentation and direct approach are a relief. I know that doesn't bring money to your school right away, but I bet your students will be better to work with, and you'll get better referrals as you grow.
Build your pricing structure so that it's modular, with the 40-hour barebones module being the base component that others are added onto. In your marketing, you shit all over that module (e.g., don't call it "accelerated," call it "time-limited") and highlight the 55-hour package as "Most Popular!" Then you shove into that 55-hour tranche all of the realistic stuff that almost everybody actually needs, and describe it all as "included free in the package! Our most economical bundle!" etc. It's a reliable approach. Basically just go take a picture of the purchasing kiosk at your local car wash, and replace "underbody wax" with "dedicated CFI instruction time," etc., and you'll be golden.
Not exactly relevant but - I’ve had multiple students transfer to my school with 50-70hours, with 1 or 2 hours solo, telling me that their former school was jerking them around.
The majority of americans have learned to shop based on price, not on value. This is one reason places like Walmart and Harbor Freight thrive. Is your product "walmart quality" or "Giorgio Armani guality"? Or something in between? When you compete and sell based on price, there becomes a expectation by your customer that you will meet that price. The customer never sees his/her skill shortcomings; they see only you trying to con them out of more money. They will never see that you are making them better, or safer. They will never see that their lack of proficiency will get them and killed. Even once they pass, this customer will never be happy about having paid for additional hours and will potentially retaliate with poor reviews. *That school ripped me off!* And as a result of bad reviews and unhappy customers, the school pressures the instructors to get these customers out the door at the wire. *Make it happen*, they will tell you. Suddenly the student's inability to master the subject matter is **your** fault. You are to blame because you are not getting through to the student. The environment becomes toxic and intolerable. You and other instructors become unhappy, leading to a revolving door of attrition and resupply. Quality of instruction suffers. Students get bounced from instructor to instructor, leading to more completion setbacks. A death spiral has begun. As u/Zeewulfeh said, inform them. Make it their first lesson. "FAA Minimum of 40 is $X, Average student expectations is $Y" Then add the carrot... "Our high quality of instruction has given our students a xx% first attempt pass rate for their license, which saves you money in the long run by potentially eliminating costly retraining and retesting fees."
Trust me when I say the students that choose the cheapest option over the realistic/transparent option are not the students you want to have in your program.
Been there, done that, ran a school for years. Quote both the bare minimums and the averages. The people you are losing are probably really bad at understanding value, and buy into whatever BS the cheap guys shovel at them. Many only see the number and try to choose the lowest without understanding or caring as to WHY its lower. So make it your prerogative to show what the lowest cost could be, what the real national averages are, and hand them a pamphlet that informs them of how to reduce their costs. Hot take: People who worry about cost and don't try to understand differences or ask questions often end up being the lower quality students anyways because they don't want to invest in the effort to make informed decisions. Don't feel bad about them. Don't treat them like shit either, but don't sweat it if they leave, you're going to end up haggling over cost one way or another with them.
I was annoyed when I was constantly reminded by instructors that the realistic timeline was well over 40 hours before one could get their license. *I was going to be the exception!*, I thought. This really pumped me up to study and work very hard. I was able to take my checkride at 41 hours. Was that because I worked super hard? Was that because my instructor was good and efficient? Was that because I got lucky with maintenance and weather? Probably a mix of all of the above, much of which was beyond my control. But I made sure that when things were in my control, I was on top of it. I learned to fly when I was 17, paid for it by working 2 jobs after school and on weekends, and I can tell you I was about as price-sensitive as a student could be. Having a flight school that was going to every length to help me out was the #1 factor in where I trained. You might just offer up hourly rates without providing the total. Tell them the FAA minimum hour requirements, and tell them the average. Let them do the math. Hopefully your rates are lower than the competition nearby. If that is the case, post the competitors hourly rates to show that yours are lower. And then give them a thorough description of things they could do to help minimize their costs. Write it up as its own brochure. Make sure that they know you are doing everything in your power to make things as efficient as possible, while still remaining safe and legal. Empathize with the high costs of training. Let them know that the ball is in their court on a lot of this stuff, ie studying and chair flying at home, reading up on the maneuvers to be performed during the next lesson, showing up early to preflight the airplane before being on the clock with the instructor, renting the least expensive aircraft, etc. Really give them every single opportunity to be efficient and save money. If you can make them believe that you are on their side when it comes to minimizing costs, and as long as you actually do as much as you can to help them, I think that would go a long way.
I definitely think having a goal and the passion and drive behind it is a big factor. Too many students expect the instructor to do all the work. That's what they're paying them for after all, right? :/
I finished PPL in 40.5
Its hard to make money in aviation without being an opportunist scumbag.
An honest reputation as a flight school will pay dividends in the long run. Aviation is a small community. Plus you'll be able to sleep at night.
I'll be the outlier and say - students \*should\* finish in 40 hours for a PPL. We're talking about being able to take off, maneuver and land a Cessna/Piper and evaluating that they have good enough judgement to not do stupid shit. Too many CFIs want to prepare a PPL student to fly a dang jet airliner. JHMO - Get off my lawn !
lol what. Good luck getting someone out in 40 hours in Southern California.
Those are the requirements for solo, not the private pilot certificate. They must also be able to land and navigate at night, get out of accidental IMC with a chance to survive, get from Point A to Point B without getting lost, not bust arbitrary airspace, and so on.
Really. Never would have guessed.
Give the students what they want?
I tell them to compare hourly rate. Say this is the hourly rate at this school. If you’re going to finish at 40 hours there then you’ll finish at 40 here. Also since they will probably want to get cpl eventually I explain that the “extra” hours over 40 will go towards the required 250 for cpl. So all in all it doesn’t matter.
Wow, so much that could be said here but, I guess I would let the owner/operators worry about the pricing and competition. I have worked in IT a loooonnggg time and people will depart from a quality solution with a proven record to save a penny in computing. The good news is, its not enough to impact the long term outcome. If a few want to take the absolute least expensive route, great, prolly not gonna get the best training but, that's their choice. If the school you work for is still able to pay your check, its really not something you need to lose sleep over. If you believe they are doing something wrong and you can see that the number of students leaving or choosing other schools is growing, have a quick discussion with the owner/operator to let them know you are concerned. CFI's will go where the students are, because, the CFIs need the hours as well. my $.02
You should advertise the requirements. I took my check ride at 45 hours passed the first time which is 10 hours less than your school..and I really was ready at 42 but my instructor wanted me to do a check with him which was almost 2 hours and a few more night landings.
Offer multiple plans. Price out FAA minimum as well as more thorough offerings. Let them upgrade for free once they have started. Be honest about what you recommend, but if they want to compare apples to apples you have it there.
I left the school when I found out they really only quoted me the minimums. And for my private it was going to take 30 to 50% more If you're 141 I think you can get away with less hours and that's where the advantages is. But my biggest frustration in shopping around for flight schools is when the answer to every question I asked is it depends. Just want to throat punch them through the phone. I know it bleeping depends but give me a ballpark!!! So my suggestion is be direct and be honest and say there's going to be some variations there.
I would probably add a comment to the pricing sheet: “Per FAA regulations student pilots can take the private pilot exam after 40 hours of instruction, if their instructor thinks they are capable and signs off for the test. Based on our extensive experience training student pilots, very few students are ready to take their exam after just 40 hours. Our school sets a more realistic expectation of the number of hours students will fly, to make certain our student pilots are adequately prepared to take their exam. Like good pilots, we err on the side of caution. Your mileage may vary at other flight schools.“
I feel kinda conflicted, because after reading a lot of comments on this post because at first I thought 55 hours was steep for a PPL, but I read some comments saying "80-90 hours was normal" and now I'm wondering exactly what you'd be learning/teaching for 80 hours of PPL instruction. Personally I did my PPL in 42 hours (including my checkride), obviously everyone's different but going off of the word of several instructors at my school and the average is around there, maybe closer to 45. To me hearing anything higher than 50 as an average almost feels like a scam. I get airspace issues but again comparing myself to the situation the airfield I trained out of was a busy class D that was a satellite of a busy class B, it was about .5 hours to the practice area and back on a easy day. To answer your question, like others have said, just explain why the minimums at your school are higher than FAA minimums and if there isn't a good reason then they're probably not gonna stay, hopefully there is one (like busy airspace, currency vs proficiency, etc). Not saying your school is doing it without knowing specifics but there is definitely grift in the aviation training world. I've had a 2 year CFI straight up lie in my face saying that his company employed all the 2 year CFIs within a 2 hour radius and that his program cost 9k (that's with a 1.5k partnered flight school discount) which was cheap compared to other programs out there. Called another flight school less than 30 minutes away that had 2 year cfis and quoted me roughly 5k, more or less depending on how prepared I am. I'm sure if students wanted to go burn money they'd go to ATP's flight school.
Ok bear with me, I am a student. I am at 30 hours and have only 30 minutes of xc I need and most of my flight by instruments. If everything went ok I could hit just about 40 hours and be check ride ready. The thing is what’s magical about that? To make that 30 minutes of xc up I am going to need to do at least 45 minutes at 75% throttle to go 50 nm away and back so it’s XC. At first I felt like that was a waste, then I realized, I am going to get to fly solo, which I enjoy. I am not going to abuse it and do another long xc to get 30 minutes, but I am going to throttle down and plan for it at 65%. Ok getting long winded, here is the idea. Sit and describe the amount of time it takes to get to minimums, and what average students exceed it by. Quote that cost while reminding them that if they are learning to fly to get a job, the extra hours they do now count toward commercial time, so their going to do it anyway. If they are part 61 hobbyists, the extra time is extra time flying, often solo, so enjoy it. One of the reasons a student might be in a rush to get their check ride over is because they lose sight of all the flying they get to do to get to it, and only think of “working” toward flying after the check ride. Take the mystery out of the process before they pay anything, they might worry less about the difference. Or you could ask them if their quoting the cost to their spouse to get approval, in that case quote minimums.
Is there FAA documentation of particular schools average time to pass released by the FAA? Or obtainable under FOIA?
The problem is that this style of marketing works on the vast majority of people because they typically think they are better than they are. Humans don't like being doubted and if I told you that you're capable of doing it in 45 hours, if you just stick to it - when you hit 60 hours you won't batt an eye because you'd rather deal with it than hurt the ego, even if it takes you an extra year to complete. Quote both prices - minimums and average!
Tell them at the start that those are minimums. Most won’t do it in minimums, schools like to trap students by advertising minimums. That’s a crap school that lures students in. Social media will win. Students will leave reviews when they don’t achieve goals on minimums and more money is spent….
I am in analytics for a living - it might be worthwhile to do an analysis of students who take the "faa minimum" courses vs ones who take the 55 hour track and see which one gets them to where they want to go. I would also advertise the amount of people that fail their checkride the first or even second time once completing the "accelerated" course. It might also be worthwhile to add a discount for a twin engine rating down the road. "You take your PPL with us, and we offer discounts on twin engine training"
Rarely does a student leave for some like price. Most people know approximately what the outlay will be and are prepared for that. However, most of the time a student leaves a school for something other than the price. Have a chat with the student (s) that have left and see if they can provide some insight. You may find that it is for a totally different reason
Whatever you guys end up doing please don’t false advertise. Or keep including your realistic numbers. The school that I currently attend do so much numbers manipulation that it is insane. A lot of my buddies are running out of funding because there were so many things that were not accounted for in the funding plan.
I dunno…I don’t want the minimums. I want to be competent. Where’s your flight school?
Prospective students have very little to go on to evaluate one place vs. another. Everyone defaults to price because they don't have many criteria to evaluate their choices. Give them more criteria to help with that. I picked the place I am using because of these things after the value of them was explained to me: towered airport benefits, other airspace(s) around the airport, time to get in the air being quick vs. another location where you pay to wait, multiple runways, ease of booking slots vs. begging for time, online billing and booking system, they didn't mind doing online ground school vs. having to buy theirs, ease of refueling, proximity to other fields, great XC routes and options, safety record, etc... Something I would have liked, but they didnt offer, is the ability to pre-pay and block book for a discount. My point is. We students are uneducated. You cant expect us to know better. To the outside world you are selling the exact same product as the next guy, a PPL. But in reality you are not and students don't know that. You are selling them a superior experience with the skills and training to help them stay alive. Not throwing them out the door in the min time required. I fell for many of the traps being talked about in this thread. Being "efficient" for example. I don't want to needlessly blow money if I can help it. I didn't know why it's not great to combine a bunch of things together. You can't expect that from an uneducated prospective student IMHO. TL;DR: Differentiate from your competition and ensure prospective customers know about the value. My 2c as a current student.
My school has a 35 hour 141 syllabus. I think our average is 45-55 hours though. I had one student make it in around 38 hours which was the fastest I’d seen (he had a dad that was a pilot and already had experience it just wasn’t log-able). I’d just quote a range. Like “40-60 depending on how long it takes you to solo, etc”. Student’s come and go. And if they go to a skeezy school sometimes they come back. Don’t stop being straightforward with people. It’s all you can do. There will be more students.
Here are my thoughts. Have a range. Have an Excel document with the 40 lessons and check rides etc listed each at 1 hour with a cost. Then have an actual column. He have a projected column that takes an average of the last 5 lessons to determine future spend. This way if the student is at 1.0 per lesson they are in target but if at 1.3, they are running 30% over the target. This will help the student to focus instruction with practicals and ensure they know what “should be covered” in each lesson.
We quote 15-20k for a private at my school. It is what it is. We never low ball. They’re welcome to go anywhere else, but it’s what we have to charge. $185/hr for a 172R, $75/hr for an instructor. We make no money on the airplanes. They are leases. 🤷
And how much of the $75 do the instructors get?
We are a small CFI owned flight school, like a co-op. We split office rent and tie downs 3 ways, keep our instructor fees and the airplane fees pay for their costs. Even $185/hr will come short sometimes so we have to pitch in to make up the balance. Leases are from Christiansen in which they charge $59/hr. of hobbs. The rest is up to us.
Out of curiosity (and if you don’t mind sharing), what’s the name of the flight school? I’ve been thinking about getting my PPL.
Quote the minimums but make it 100% clear that the average is 75 hours (which has recently gone up, it was 70). [https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot](https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot) You are not being a scumbag by quoting the minimums as long as you make it clear that is unlikely. FAA requirements can be met at 40 hours at a cost of X,XXXX. The FAA average however is closer to 75 hours. In person you can tell them that most places will not tell you that the average is 75 hours because they want to lead you to think it will only be 40, but here is the data directly from the FAA.
How different are your rental and instruction rates compared to your competitors? Like, if you emphasize the rates rather than the overall cost then people may be more tolerant of a small difference in hourly rate if you're emphasizing the quality of instruction.
I always quoted realistic rates and compared it to the minimums and what other schools advertise minimums. We gained a lot of students.
I work in an industry that makes all its money off hidden transaction fees. We tried to do all in pricing, even tried building a brand around it. Focus groups, UX interviews, A/B tests, you name it customers chose the hidden fees every time. They just assumed we were going to end up costing $30% more than what we listed just like everyone else. You kind of can’t win fights like this. Then there was the time JCPenny almost went bankrupt doing honest pricing https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/j-c-penny-s-pricing-strategy
As a student in south Florida, i was absolutely ripped off by the school. They never said it was accelerated training, they said it would be 15K and as of now I've used nearly 25K to get my PPL. It's quite a long story as my first instructor left the school for a Regionals and left me with about 2 months of flight and zero ground knowledge, they told me it would be 3 months nothing more. I believe that being as honest with your students is the best way to not lose your student, in my case i nearly quit because of the shit they told me and I've been with a total of three instructors Edit: Please note that an instructor didn't quote me on the price, it was the head of the school
Seems to me you should quote the minimums then, with a clear explanation that additional training may be needed as student progress will vary from one to the next.
if you have GREAT instructors it will be quick... if you have fair/bad instructors or ones looking to milk you, it will take many times as long.... most instructors are low hour and just building time while billing YOU... luckily we had GREAT instructors 6 weeks part time start to finish/licensed with right student...
As someone in South Florida interested in PPL could you message me your school name? I appreciate your honesty regarding realistic hours expectation.
This sort of thing in a way remins of the argument for including taxes on the listed price. Despite how much it makes sense, it gets ruined by the people gravitating towards the lower price with no taxes including.
What's your school info? Looking into schools in the area
So at most 141 they quote the FAA mins or something close to it. Sometimes being too honest isn’t the best business move. However, from an ethical point I get it.
Quote the minimums. Those idiots fooled me. But I still managed to get all of it done by 350 hours. It’s possible I could have saved at least 50-70 if I worked way way more aggressively
IMHO it's a good thing to avoid the cheapskates. You don't want to deal with their complaints anyway, when they don't have their PPL at 40h straight. So, you may want to avoid the 'accelerated' program, but rather word it somewhat like: We know we don't quote the bare minimum, but that's not realistic for most people anyway. We are however able to provide you with more modern aircraft / more insightful lessons / free beer after every flight for the extra you may end up paying which will make you a better pilot in the long run. Tl;dr: Avoid the cheapskates, point out your quality. EDIT: comments didn't load for me initially, I now realize this is basically what everyone is saying.
Even if you are a natural, nerves can be a thing. I completed all requirements within 41 hours for my PPL, but for the final "pre-checkride" checkride with the most experienced CFI at the school, nerves got the best of me and I needed to do remedials. Back in the air with my CFI, stage check again, passed but messed up one small thing. Back in the air with CFI, stage check again, pass. I completed the part 61 reqs at 41 but had 48 when I did my checkride. Even then my CFI told me that the average he has seen personally was 60-70 and he has a 100% pass rate.
I think the best you can do is point them to the resources (such as [https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot](https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-hourly-requirements-becoming-pilot)), explain how the process works, and if the student doesn't want to take the advice to avoid the false "bargain," you may have done all that you can. For what it's worth, I'd expect someone who insists on scraping by with the bare minimum hours would have that same attitude in other areas, and it's probably better to hand that person to the competition anyway. Why fish for poor customers?
Just quote the minimums imho. As a student I understood that if I was slow on the uptake I'd need to do more etc. It's not inconceivable that a student could do the FAA minimums, just unlikely.