For every hour flown you spend an hour prepping/marketing?
Someone calls me and wants to do a flight review. I probably spend 10 minutes talking to them on the phone as we try to align schedules, I try to learn a little about them, figure out what sort of flying they do, etc.
Before the flight I'm looking at the weather. I'm looking at my past records to determine what was done the last time I've flown with this person. Perhaps I'm not that familiar with their type airplane (this happens all the time) now I'm looking for owners manuals on the internet and type forums trying to learn at least something about it so I can be somewhat effective in executing the review. At the minimum this is going to be 15 minutes at the max this might take hours.
Perhaps the flight gets scheduled for 8am. I get to the airport at 7:45am and wait for them to show up. Sometimes they'll be there at 8. Other times it might be 8:15 or 8:30. They're probably flying in, **** happens, people end up late. Maybe today is a good day and they are there precisely at 8am and by 8:10 am we've started the ground. The ground will take about 1.2 hours on average and after that they're going to want to take a potty break and preflight. We'll be lucky if we're in the air by 10am. Another 1.5 in the air and we're on the ground by 11:30. They're going to want another potty break and by 11:45 or so I'm signing their logbook and we're debriefing. By noon they're gone and I now need to write this in my records as per the fars and write my own notes incase I ever hear from a lawyer or feds if they prang a plane. That'll take another 15 minutes.
Time is now 12:15 and after all that I've got about 4.5 hours at best, perhaps 5 or more, loaded into this one single flight review. Most people are not going to pay me 5*35 even though that's what the actual time was. Instead, they're going to at most, want to pay for the 1.5 hours of flying and the 1.2 hours of ground plus perhaps 15 minutes. That's about 2.9 hours billable at best. 2.9*35 is $101.50 in my pocket.
It's unlikely I've managed to stack multiple flight reviews in one day. I wish I could. Those are *the most* profitable thing. Instead, I've probably managed to book another two flights. I probably set the next one at 1pm so now I'm scrambling to go eat, and get ready for the next flight. I get back to the airport at 12:45 and look through my notes regarding the next student. They show up at 1pm and we're doing a lesson on ground reference maneuvers. That will take about 15 minutes, perhaps more, of ground discussion. Now the airplane needs to be preflighted. Since I've already taught the student how to preflight and since I firmly believe people need to teach themselves to a degree (without me hovering over them) I wait inside the FBO while they spend the next 25 minutes preflighting. Now perhaps the student decides they need gas and that takes another 25 minutes to get since the FBO is jacking around. I'm not about to question a new pilot's developing judgement when they made a fuel decision so I wait. This part could burn anywhere from .3 to 1.0 hours said and done and I don't bill for it. Instead I spend that time on the phone trying to sort through the new contacts I have from other people wanting to learn to fly.
Finally by 2pm or so we're in the air, we fly for a bit, and we land at 3:15 pm. They take a bathroom break, we debrief, and I'm done with them by 3:30. So how much can I bill for that? Perhaps .25 of ground, another .15 for debriefing, and 1.2 in the airplane. A grand total of 1.6 hours, or $56.
My next student is at 5:00 pm so now I just need to sit around and burn 1.5 hours. They're a cross country student and want to get dinner, who am I to turn down their desire to make their training a little more fun. They show up at 5:15 pm (traffic slowed them a bit) and we sit down and start talking about the flight. They show me their planning and ask me questions and suddenly it's 6 pm. Time to go preflight and watch them try to figure out the fuel again. This will burn 30 minutes. Could I have the plane topped off before they got there? Sure I could. But how the hell are they going to learn if I don't make them do things for themselves.
By 6:30 pm we're airborne and heading to an airport an airport 75 miles way. We get there in 0.8 hobbs and now they want to run into town to get dinner. By the time they get a courtesy car and we get to the restaurant it's 8 pm. We order dinner and I end up paying for my own food (pretty common, actually) and we head back to the airport. At 9:30 pm we're back at the airport and now they need to fumble around in the dark with their new fancy headlamp they bought from Sportys and do another preflight. It takes 30 minutes (most new people do) and we get in the airplane and head back to Lincoln. It takes us about 1.0 hours to get back and we land at 11pm. Now they need to go to the bathroom again, I need to sign their logbooks, we need to debrief, and I'll be lucky if I'm out the door by 11:30 pm.
Wow that took a lot of my time. How much can I actually bill? In most businesses you'd bill from hand-shake to hand-shake, in this case, 6.25 hours, or $218. Guess how many people actually think that's how this should work? After all, they took me to dinner, and I got free hours! Most likely I'm going to end up billing 1.8 in flying and .7 or so in ground, or $87.
So I just spent 15 or so hours at the airport and managed to bill about $244 (7 ish hours billable). I added 4 hours to my logbook.
That right there, is a day worth being proud of, as you're more typically going to spend more time waiting around doing nothing between flights and you'll probably end up with less profitable flights (more short 0.8 to 1.0 hour flights spaced oddly apart).
You'll have weeks where you can't even fly because of weather. But you can't get another job because you can only do it for a week. And if you weren't a full time flight instructor you wouldn't be able to meet the odd schedule demands of students.
It's a hard business. Myself, I bill about $5,000 per year, and $1,500 of that goes right out the door to insurance.
) and was just looking for some guidance as to what's typical/appropriate.
