So about 8 months after I used up my $350 gift certificate, I was on my way to the San Francisco Bay to start my pilot training at The Sierra Academy of Aeronautics. I was in the professional Pilot Program but just looked at their price estimates for each rating. I gave the school the amount of money they quoted for the Private Pilot Certificate.

So a month or so later I did my first then second solo. I was signed off to solo within 25 Miles of the Oakland International Airport. Once that happened every time a plane was open I would go for a flight, That is what I was there for right? I just wanted to fly !.

One Day I got a call to go up to the accounting department : ( In the brochure for all of their flight training programs it stated Private Pilot License — $4000 Or something Close to that it was a long time ago.

So the accounting person said I was out of money. I said how is that ?, Your book states Private Pilot License — $4000 ?. Then he started to break down everything that I had spent. Most of it was Dual Instruction( The plane Plus the Instructor) a lot of it was just solo ( just the cost of the airplane) then there were some other things that I was charged for that were “ In the fine Print”

I think at this point I had about 75 hours and I hadn’t even done my solo cross countries yet…

In the big picture I was going to obtain my Private Pilot license / instrument rating / commercial single engine and Multi Engine ratings. So this lack of understanding was not that bad in the big picture of things since I budgeted for 250 hours. I did have to find other options for my three flight instructor ratings though.

If I was only on a $4000 budget for my Private Pilot Certificate, I would have been in trouble, I would have run out of money and not been able to complete my training.  With flying being so expensive today, This is one thing today is very common.

So what happened? The answer was simple, I really didn’t know what I was getting into, I just wanted to fly. This is one of the traps people fall into when they just jump in the plane and start flying .

Hope To See You In The Sky !!

Airfreddy