The Cost of the Commercial Certificate - Airplane
To continue in the saga about how much pilot training costs, we pick up with the cost of a commercial airplane certificate. These posts are based on my personal experience to give you real-life example costs. The training for this certificate is mainly about accumulating hours and mastering a few new, challenging maneuvers.
First off, check out the previous posts if you haven’t already. Many of the original costs of learning to fly came at the beginning of training and there isn't necessarily much more to purchase for the commercial.
The total cost of the training I did that was attributed to my commercial certificate was $12,050. We will break down the specific costs in those categories later. First, let's dive into what factors have the most impact on the variable cost.
Factors Influencing Training Cost of the Commercial Certificate
The costs I experienced will differ from others’. Much of the variability will be the time building someone has to do to reach minimums. Let's break down a few specific aspects of my training that impacted the cost.
- My training was completed under part 61. Some people train under Part 141, which reduces the total hour requirement from 250 to 190. That is a huge difference! I decided I would rather spend the money to fly than to spend a lot of money in ground instruction required by a part 141 program.
- I completed my private pilot at 77 hours and at the end of my instrument training I had 185 hours. This meant that I didn't need to do as much time building as others may have to for reaching the 250 hour requirement. I had 65 hours to build.
- For my time building, I did much of it in a Piper Archer that was charging a dry rate of $45 per hour. I could fly at very economical cruise powers to build time. This ended up allowing me to build hours for an average of about $95 per hour.
- I trained in a flying club with an independent instructor. This is almost always going to lower the total training costs over attending a flight school or a larger training center.
The Cost of Commercial Training by Categories
Let's now break that total down into some specific categories of costs.
Supplies and Fixed Costs
For the supplies category, my total costs were $175. I still had the Jeppesen Commercial and Instrument book I purchased for my instrument training. That left just one thing I purchased - the Gleim commercial ground school course that would give me my endorsement for the written exam.
Memberships and Subscriptions
I had no new costs in this category for my commercial certficate.
Exams
I paid a total of $775 for my commercial certificate checkride and my FAA written exam. Those costs have risen since 2023.
Instructor Costs
My instructor costs were about $1,015 total. I logged a total of 20 hours of dual instruction for my commercial training. 5 hours of that was at a flight school in my area to get my missing TAA time completed. While this accounted for only 20% of my dual hours, it made up 50% of my instructor costs. That can help you see the difference between flight schools and flying clubs.
Flight Costs
Now for the flight training portion which I completed with a total of 76 flight hours putting me at 261 when I was finished. I accidentally did 10 more hours of time building than needed prior to finishing up my instruction. The total for flight costs were about $10,090 for those 76 hours.
Summary
Obtaining a commercial pilot certificate can vary widely in cost depending on training needs, time-building requirements, and the type of instruction chosen. In this post, I broke down the specific expenses I encountered during my journey to a commercial certificate, offering a transparent look at what others might expect. If you're interested in discussing your own path to a commercial pilot certificate, contact Oshkosh Aviation to learn more about how we can help make your training experience as efficient and cost-effective as possible.