I always offered to pay for that time, he didnt except so there it is.
Nope, my CFI was great for many reasons, and one of those reasons was not ripping off his students. He enjoyed to teach and did it well, and again another CFI I have used flew with me for an hour and wouldn't except payment. I always offered topay more. All im saying is there are plenty of CFI's out there not trying to financially rape their students. I have ZERO problems with paying top dollar for a provided service but I be danged if Ill pay a CFI to charge me dual while Im out solo, what service am I being provided?
Therein lies one of the problems with GA and CFI's. There are plenty of CFI's who do this because they love flying and for them, its more hobby than career. They will always charge less and bill less hours than the career minded CFI's. That's not a knock against career CFI's so much as it is a statement of reality; a career CFI is deriving income upon which they need to live, a hobbyist CFI is picking up a bit extra on the side.
So long as the 2 are competing in a competitive market and so long as there are people willing to provide free instructional time there will be arguments about the cost of a CFI and a general reduction in wage earning capability of the newly minted commercial pilot. We see this in other parts of aviation such as banner towing operations; many banner tow pilots are already paid comparatively low wages, especially for the risk involved and the situation is only exacerbated by the number of people willing to pay to learn and get in to banner towing which only drives down the wage of banner tow pilots that much more.
I get it. We want to get value for our money and for those of us doing our instruction part 61, we're probably more hobbyist than career oriented. That means we're more discerning in how we spend our money.
I've ranted on here myself about the cost of plane rental and flight school insurance requirements that included not just being current but being current in their specific airplane (forget the fact I have 60 hours flying in the last 3 months, it was 60 hours flying in planes that weren't theirs so I need to go up with an instructor) and for IFR? Well might as well forget about that since you have to be specially approved before each flight and maintain separate currency with the school (again forget the fact that I have more than enough approaches for FAA currency in the last month with several done in actual instrument conditions) but I digress.
We dont need or see value in spending the 80k it is now to start at 0 time with ATP and get to an ATP in 2 years (9 months for PPL/IRA/CPL/MEL/CFI/CFII/MEI); we can take our time, spend the money as we see fit and probably only spend half to 2/3 as much. We're still paying 50k or more but its less noticeable because its not upfront but spread out over time (and typically several years) and we're probably getting instruction from more experienced instructors (though the lack of structure in part 61 means the instruction we do receive may be of varying quality).
CFI's who work for a flight school usually dont see all of the amount that's paid per hour; I just got done working with a flight school on one of my ratings that charged $49 for flight time and $35 for ground. My instructor saw $25 for flight time and $15 for ground... He could work there full time and would only earn somewhere between 35-50k/yr without benefits or time off and to earn the top end $50k, he'd have to fly 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year (an improbable outcome even in the generally good weather location I was flying)... Oh and to top it off he's officially a 1099 independent contractor (what the flight school was providing to the instructor for half the billed rate, I dont know) so he'd have to pay Self-employment income taxes.
Teacher pay in general seems to be a sore spot whether the teacher is an actual grade school teacher or a CFI. I suspect the issue is that we like to think we could do it without the teacher. That the teacher is not a required component of the equation and is ancillary to our own effort. We see it as "our" effort not the instructors effort so we question what it is that teachers do because we're the ones "putting in the work..."
There's also a time component involved. Again we're willing to pay more for things we deem urgent than things we pursue as a hobby. There are many professions we pay quite a bit more for per hour than CFI's that are comparatively less critical to our survival than a CFI.
Many of these same arguments are the same reason I am against minimum wage increases. No offense to the minimum wage burger flipper or menial labor but if they get paid $15/hour, not only does the cost of their service go up (meaning I pay more) but there is little evidence that it will drive wages up in unrelated industries and to me a CFI is worth more than a burger flipper.
). But honestly, you earned 15 minutes' pay if it took you that long to review the weather.
