There are a lot better sites for information on flight training. Try https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/ to start.

Flight training is dependant on the instructor/student relationship. Many instructors are not very good at teaching. Even an instructor who is a good teacher won't be right for every student. Each student is different with different learning styles and should look for an instructor who fits. Interview potential instructors to see if their instructing style matches how you learn. Find an instructor who has trained a good number of pilots and is sending pilots for checkrides regularly. This shows that they know how to efficiently guide students through the process to a successful conclusion. Find out what syllabus the instructor will be using and get a copy of it so you know what will be covered next and can prepare. If your instructor is not using a syllabus find another instructor. Always remember that you are the customer. If you don't 'click' with your first CFI find one with whom you do.

Flight schools are often owned and run by pilots who may, or may not, have any concept of good customer service. "Interview" the school. Pay attention to how you are treated when you first inquire about training and if they are focused on meeting your needs or if they are just telling you what you will have to do to fit into their system. Do they have a long list of rules that treat you more like an employee than the customer or do they adapt to your needs?

Schools like to show off their fancy aircraft. New and fancy is expensive. You don't need a late-model Garmin G1000 DA40 to learn to fly. An older Cessna or Piper without the latest avionics will be a lot less expensive and you can easily learn the fancy new technology after earning your license and still have a lot of saved-money left over.

All of the information you need to learn is available for free from the FAA in pdf format. You can buy the same books in trade paperback format at low cost on Amazon or other retailers.

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_poli...uals/aviation/

Start with the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and the Airplane Flying Handbook. There is no need to buy expensive courseware or ground school courses. If you want a fancy multimedia online course they are certainly available and may be worth the price if that format helps you learn the material. The FAA handbooks, however, are still the place to start and are the official source of the information on which you will tested.

What the student can do to keep the costs down is to study effectively. Many students show up at the airport expecting the CFI to teach them but do only limited studying on their own. That's fine but it'll be a lot more expensive. When I was teaching I explained this to my students. I was happy to teach them one-on-one (at $50/hr) if that's what they wanted but always laid out (and encouraged) how they could do most of the studying on their own for both the required knowledge and to be better prepared for flight lessons so that they'd get the most out of them.

Lastly, CFIs don't make a killing. Flight schools are marginally profitable at best. CFIs are not well paid. In 2009/10 I went back to full-time flight instructing for 13 months while between airline jobs. During that time I made a little over $25,000 while being billed at $50/hr.

Couldn't agree with this more! I'm not an airline pilot myself but I do hold a Canadian commercial pilot licence. I flew with a few flight schools and the quality can vary a lot. Make the choice based on what feels right for you. I went with a "cheaper" flight school for a little while and found the instruction wasn't great and there were quite a few mechanical issues. I got fairly lucky with my first instructor - he fit my learning style very well and held me to high standards. Whenever I'd fly with other instructors they'd be impressed and I owe most of that to my first instructor. One thing that I wish I did when he left is look for someone who had similar traits rather than just going with what the CFI gave me.

Studying the material yourself is the single easiest thing you can do to reduce cost. My instructors would hardly charge me for any ground instruction outside what they had to since I generally knew my stuff (I was studying engineering at the same time as getting my license so that my have something to do with it too :D). My instructors would often quickly review what we were doing and ask me some questions then off we went.

Best of luck!

How many people earn their PPL before age 18?
 

Hello - new to forum. I see that less than 1% of those earning their PPL do so between the ages of 16-19 - roughly 3502 / 610000 in last year's stats.. Are there any numbers available on how many people earn their license before they turn 18? Thanks in advance!

While I am happy to see this thread here, this isn't really the best forum for super in depth discussion on this topic. FlyerTalk is more about the flying experience behind the cockpit door, rather than in front of.

While I don't have the exact number for you, I would caution against starting flying training too early, in a general sense. Progression really doesn't hit full pace until you hit 18, so aiming for a PPL at 17, if you are career minded, may end up costing you more in the longer run.

I once knew a kid that got his PPL the very day he was legal to do so. A quick google search shows its at 17 years old, but my memory is telling me he was much younger. He worked at the local FBO and was one of the sharpest pilots I've ever met.

I got super lucky as my instructor and I hit it off from day 1. We are still good friends 19 years later.