Flight School Funding Advice? CPL(H)

[LittleJack]

I'm finally making the jump to Pilot after being an aircrewman and helicopter mechanic for 13 years.

The helicopter school I've chosen does not have VET Fee help available. Just wondering what advice and suggestions you guys and gals might have in how to pay for the CPL(H). What loans to look at, lenders that have been good for you, etc. All up it will cost between $70k-$90k.

Thanks!
Little Jack

[Heliflyer]

My advice is not to borrow money if you can help it. When I did my CPL it was around 50K. I had a good car which I sold to buy a crappy car, that plus savings gave me around $22K to start with. Did my CPL in just over a year and managed to save the rest as I went along.

[flyhuey]

LittleJack,

Go to America to get your Pilot Licence, it'll probably cost you half. Use the money you save to pay for transition to a turbine helicopter, like the Hughes 500, AS350, or Bell Jet Ranger . . . Again, get the training in the USA, where it will cost less.

Too expensive, here.

Ridiculous over-regulation contributes greatly to it, where you need a Certificate III, just to blow your nose.

[RePLCPLH]

G'day LittleJack,

While I think it's important to find the right school, personally I would've done my license years ago if I'd known about VET fee help. Yes, you'll pay more, but the fact is you're not going to miss the cash as it'll come out of your pay alongside your tax once you're working. Having any savings up your sleeve will be handy when it comes time to fork out $1400 for that nice Bose A20 headset, or doing the extra flying you'll need to convert your license to NZ, Canada, US, etc if that's where you need to go to get work.

My two cents is as follows:

1. The theory isn't easy. Our ground school covered the 7 theory subjects in 13 weeks. I'm used to studying and figured I'd have plenty of time to work on weekends and have a bit of a life. Wrong. Apart from post-exam blowouts with a few too many beers, I studied pretty much every day to get through all 7 exams first time in 12 weeks so I could start flying earlier. Sure it's possible you could get through it part-time doing a subject here and there, but I've seen some really smart people struggle as they haven't been able to commit to studying due to other commitments. The easier way is to devote 5-6 months of your life to doing very little else. I'm assuming you have savings if you're considering paying for this outright, so one alternative may be to look at a school further away that does offer student loans through VET, and put your savings towards living expenses for the 5-6 months it'll take to smash out the theory and flying in one hit.

2. Think about employability once you're done. There's nothing wrong with doing your whole CPL on 22s if you have years of experience on the ground with livestock and your goal is to be a mustering pilot. If you want to head in any other direction though, you're likely going to need 44 time to get a job. Flight schools are a business and to some extent, they're going to tell you what suits them in order to make money. Few will be honest about what ratings and endorsements are really relevant at what stage in your flying. For example: a lot of schools might push doing your turbine endorsement soon after completing your CPL, whereas putting that cash towards the difference between R22 and R44 rates (around $300 an hour) during your training would have been far more bang for your buck in order to land a job. Very few employers are going to put a low hours pilot in their turbine aircraft before they've logged plenty of time on a 44. I know of one school that offers VET fee help with a reasonable all up-price and is including 20 hours on R44s as part of the deal.

Feel free to DM me if I can be of any help.

[Gasket18]

The last answer is what I've been contemplating. I've just started studying, well trying to on my own before starting flying. Have been trying to decide between keeping working to keep trying to pay bills or go for fee assistance, find a part time job and do the whole thing in 1 go. Finding it very hard to study on my own and when you don't know anyone else into flying, it's kind of hard to retain the info you've learned. Then you have to consider where it can lead, which ads another element for me, as I'm now 48 so not really a long career span at the end of training, so future prospects are quite slim. Really tough when the outlay is as much as a doctor yet the financial return is so small. However the bonus is flying what else is there to life really Other problem with going the fee assistance route is it ads 20k to the top of the initial outlay. Then it's amusing that all rotory people you see replying to newbies asking if its worth it, all say fly fixed wing, and all the fixed wing folks say fly choppers. I hope you managed to work out how to do your licence. A guy said he will try and help me set up a part time schooling thing.. I started fifo work not long ago to get myself out of debt and then try save for lessons.. I'm almost out of debt. So hopefully soon, can start passing exams then flying.

[ChicoCheco]

Going to US isn't worth unless it's primary goal. Need more hrs if no prior airtime AND exchange rate is killer now. Plus the bias from potential employers/networking benefits training in Oz.

I used to recommend US before, but now it's not worth it without other aeronautical experience to credit towards 150hrs or wanting to do the placement work visa to instruct (then would need 200hrs HeLI TT to instruct 22/44 with other caveats).

[FerrariFlyer]

Add to the CPL-H of circa $80k another $75-80k for an instrument rating along with $4-5k for ATPL theory...you won't get the ATPL until you have the experience and you are effectively with a major operator with access to a level D sim for the check flight. This is of course if you want to break into offshore or eventually get into EMS (then you'll also need NVIS which is another $20k unless someone gifts the training to you).

Best advice now is to pursue the airlines in the USA and the world generally. They are throwing huge dollars towards qualified pilots to keep their regional aircraft flying. Some recent low timer rotary guys from oz have recently converted to FAA fixed wing and they were all offered jobs before they even finished their training! Within 2 years they'll be on a 747 freighter or 777 on more money then you'll likely ever make in helicopters.

[Couch Monster]

Going to US isn't worth unless it's primary goal. Need more hrs if no prior airtime AND exchange rate is killer now. Plus the bias from potential employers/networking benefits training in Oz.

I used to recommend US before, but now it's not worth it without other aeronautical experience to credit towards 150hrs or wanting to do the placement work visa to instruct (then would need 200hrs HeLI TT to instruct 22/44 with other caveats).

This statement rings true with me. I went to the US to start my pilot training a year ago.

It made sense as my girlfriend is American (thought I was clever by doing my training there and spending time with her; killing 'two birds with one stone').

I went through all the hurdles of getting my M-Visa and locating a good flight school. Unfortunately, I was living in Orange County and had to commute daily to San Diego (about 300km round trip per day).
Not to mention having to dodge peak hour traffic on the Interstate 5 HWY.. I would depart home at 4:30am, and get home from flight school around 3pm.

It was a hard slog and one of the conditions of your M-Visa is that you must be present at your flight school more than 18 hours per week.
Now, that doesn't sound like much, but when you're forking out $500aud per hour (after being screwed by the exchange rate), paying hundreds of dollars in fuel, it starts to burn a hole in your savings.
Not to mention that renting a place to live in California is grossly overpriced.

I was working 1 month in PNG and then flying back to the US for 1 month of flight training. I couldn't afford to pay for my training in one go.

Eventually, my flight school informed me (suddenly) that they had cancelled their International Student Program - because they were cutting operating costs at the school.

After investing over $20,000 on the training, visas, living costs and monthly trips between PNG and LAX, I didn't even log enough hours to do my first solo.

Obviously, this is an extreme case because I was limited by the fact I was also trying to balance my job in PNG, my relationship in America and the rest of my time to flight training.
Also, a lot of time spent in transit, at airports, on planes - in multiple countries. I eventually started to burn out after only a few months.

*Funny story*

I spent all my money at flight school. I was broke and ended up needing an emergency tooth extraction. Obviously i couldn't afford a dentist in America, so I drove across the border to Tijuana and had the procedure done in Mexico

Long story short: Training in the US doesn't really work out any cheaper once you factor in all the additional costs

Hope this helps!

[jimiemick]

Going to US isn't worth unless it's primary goal. Need more hrs if no prior airtime AND exchange rate is killer now. Plus the bias from potential employers/networking benefits training in Oz.

I used to recommend US before, but now it's not worth it without other aeronautical experience to credit towards 150hrs or wanting to do the placement work visa to instruct (then would need 200hrs HeLI TT to instruct 22/44 with other caveats).

This statement rings true with me. I went to the US to start my pilot training a year ago.

It made sense as my girlfriend is American (thought I was clever by doing my training there and spending time with her; killing 'two birds with one stone').

I went through all the hurdles of getting my M-Visa and locating a good flight school. Unfortunately, I was living in Orange County and had to commute daily to San Diego (about 300km round trip per day).
Not to mention having to dodge peak hour traffic on the Interstate 5 HWY.. I would depart home at 4:30am, and get home from flight school around 3pm. !

Man I hate the 5 with a passion. I lived in the OC
In Irvine for abit if 2011/2012 and the thought of the freeway at anytime of the day except middle of the night just made you want to leave the place.
Let alone going down to SD. Fair effort.

What are you doing with your schooling now ?

[Yakking]

The benefit of hindsight

It’s interesting looking back at this thread after COVID has kicked off. Nearly all the advice can now been thrown out the window or is no longer relevant.

What is also interesting to see is that Flight training seems to be an “essential service” with flight schools still operating ( you just have to wash your hands a little more whilst at the school!?!?).

Driver instruction is not however deemed essential, with driving schools getting fined for teaching kids how to drive.

If only there was a little consistency from the govt (insert head slapping emoji)

Yak(spent too much time in isolation and it’s beginning to show)king.

[Couch Monster]

[/quote]
Man I hate the 5 with a passion. I lived in the OC
In Irvine for abit if 2011/2012 and the thought of the freeway at anytime of the day except middle of the night just made you want to leave the place.
Let alone going down to SD. Fair effort.

What are you doing with your schooling now ?[/quote]


You know my misery well then I was living in Tustin (squished between Irvine and the 55 Freeway to Costa Mesa). My other half just relocated back to Poway, in San Diego.. Would have been nice to be there when I started my training!
Did you do any flying when you were in California? It's pretty scenic from an R22 when the doors are off. Having Miramar and Camp Pendleton nearby meant there was always military aircraft around. Saw many Vipers, Venoms, Blackhawks, Pavehawks, Super Stallions, Ospreys, F16's and F18's. I enjoyed being swooped by AH1Z's when driving home on the Interstate 5 in the afternoons. I'm surprised they loitered so low and close to the freeway.

I'm going back to Heliwest and doing my CPL there. Unfortunately, finances are low, due to this pandemic

Hoping to get back in the saddle within the next month!

[487072]

The US pricing structure is a little different to Australia in my experience as well. In Australia I was charged an hourly flying rate which included the instructor and briefings, pre- and post-flight, etc. In the US I was charged additional for all the time I spent on campus with the instructor. So for a 1.5hr flying lesson for example I was charged 1.5hr aircraft time, 1.5hr flight instruction and 0.4hr 'ground instruction' for time it took to daily, fuel and do the paperwork with the instructor. Worked out to be as much if not more than the Australian hourly rate depending on the exchange rate.

[Couch Monster]

That's right. I experienced the same thing in the US. On paper, the base price looks much more competitive than AU rates. I think the base price per hour was around $256.00 USD?
The taxes aren't that high, but it still adds up in the end. We can forgo GST for CPL training in AU, which is a good incentive.

One thing that will continue to bug me about the US, is the way they advertise everything without tax.
It seems a little deceitful to non-Americans like myself

If a soft drink costs $1.13, then why not advertise it as such? Don't put **ONLY 99c**! I can imagine if I was a little tacker taking my pocket money to the local milk bar to purchase lollies, only to find out the price on tag isn't the actual price at all..

Ok, I won't grumble any longer on the subject