#222 How much does instructor make from flight school charges?

Alright, we're doing something cool for Day 222 in the Hogs Hanger. We're doing a little rearranging. And just today Heather is putting together the Hogs Wall. There's the next one going up. Everybody will get yourself back up on the wall in a nice frame.

How many you got?

117 to put up, right? Is that what you said? So you got 117 of these to rebuild. And if you remember, in our old hangar, it was a nasty old 1960s paneling. And we just start slapping these pictures up about a year ago as an idea, hey, let's highlight our members. And it turned into the Hogs Wall of Fame. And we were so freaking excited. So first we're going to everybody that we had on the wall already. Heather's reprinting them with fresh paper. It's a better looking. It's a better looking sheet. And now we're fraying them so they won't get, you know, if it gets a little damp in here.

Right.

They won't get warped. And before we were throwing up on that paneling with these stupid little plastic things and it was just, it was awesome to get started.

But everybody's gonna go back on the wall.

So we have enough already that we're gonna be.

We're gonna fill up this one.

That one, that one, that one. So we figured four of those sections are already taken.

Yeah.

And then a whole another wall that we still have to put up.

Yep.

We got two more panels and they're back there.

We got to get those put back.

Together and get those up so we can still keep some nice clean ones for backgrounds. And so yeah, we're gonna be filling these up for everybody. Then I'm gonna get to a cool CFI question here, something that a gentleman just asked.

Yep.

And Heather just said, make sure you.

Get your pictures in. So to get to a question for today, this is Coffee with Kenny. Day 222. I want to do something fun for day 222. And this email came in just at the right time. As we were excited about the wall. We were stressing yesterday going, how are we going to do this? Trying to think of different ways to mount them. And then we just finally said, you know, what about just using picture frame for every single person? Heather went down to the Dollar General or Dollar Store and found a decent frame and we put one up. We're like, this is it, man. This is a ticket. This will be so much nicer. Again. We like the Hogswell at the Old hanger. But this is professional and this can be really cool. And to show how much we appreciate our members and appreciate our members. Sending in the pictures. Heather just mentioned, you know, a lot of you, we have maybe a private photo from maybe you've went on and done your commercial, your instrument or your CFI sense. Send us another one because we'll put you up again. And we have several members that we have three and four pictures from where they sent us a picture on every single rating she has put up. Jed Hughes, he's our saw pilot. 3.3 million views on that video of Jed sawing trees. Awesome. So to get through today or today's question, this just came in. This is great. And I don't think I've ever covered this one. You know, it's amazing how things keep popping up. Right. New questions that we haven't really covered before. So this gentleman is Doug and he's taking the big plunge to become helicopter pilot and he's taking out the loans and he's going for it. Awesome. He said, I think you stated during the ground period, Instructors charge around 50 an hour. 50 an hour is kind of an average rate. There are places are going to charge you less and there are places that are going to charge you more. So 50, it's a number we throw out there. Pretty much the general ballpark. You're going to be 50 somewhere around that area. Now, does all this go to the instructor? If you're flying with an independent CFI who's just flying on his own, not working for a school and let's say, you know, you bought your helicopter? Sure. He gets to keep all that money. That's his money. He goes on to ask, or do they get a general 20 to 25 hours and the rest goes to the school? Yes, something along that lines. Most flight schools are going to take a percentage of whatever it is they're charging you for the instruction time. The instructor gets part of that money and the flight school keeps part of that money. That's just business. That's just the way it works. The business is providing that instructor with a job. Most times it's going to be fair. Maybe there's times when it's not. But in general, that's the way it works. Flight schools deserve to make money. Flight schools in general, I always say, not usually the best money making proposition. If you're a good instructor, will people specifically ask for you, giving you more students, which equals more money and more flight time? Certainly could. Now, again, any individual school, it's just Going to depend. Are they small school, big school, how do they schedule their students? I can't answer that for every single case. But why wouldn't you want to be the best that you can be anyway, right? You want to be good regardless of situation. Because why not? We got one time around in life and are you going to do it half assed or are you going to do it right? And I always say, and I've said this a lot, it's not that hard to be better than the average instructor. And I'm telling you that's the truth. Most instructors just do kind of half assed it get through and just build their time and don't really give a hoot about the students. Ground school. I feel like if you put in the extra effort and your outstanding instructor, people are going to request you more often, which is a bonus for the instructor over another who might have asked the block of instruction in order to get straight to flying to build hours. Yes, absolutely. That's how my whole career started. I was just, I became the ground guy because nobody else wanted to do it and they all just go, oh, Kenny will do ground with you. Even though I was a new instructor and I needed to build time, I still did what it took for people and you know, I'm making a living at this 20 years later an instructor and it's, it was from just working hard at it fell in my checkrides, going through all the headaches and heartaches I did and always doing what's right for my students. And I've just this way, I've done done it for 20 years. And then he goes on to say and do instructors within the school pass on the crappy blocks of instruction to newer CFIs so they can hurry up and finish their hours. Thanks in advance of course. So hopefully that helps you out a little bit. You know, in the long run you always want to be the best you can be anyway and you can be better than the average cfi. And I'm going to throw out you can do well. When I was flying ems I was like the typical EMS guy at first. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm just going to fly EMS and take a break from instruction. Didn't take long for people to start asking me to fly my days off. And I had a guy who bought a new aircraft and he'd called a couple times and I was busy and I was working overtime at the EMS base and so a week or two went by and he sent me a text and said, you Want to help me or not? He goes, call me back, if you will. I'll pay you $100 an hour, needless to say.

Okay, 100 bucks an hour.

I'll do that. And I turned out working on this gentleman's entire rating. It was his idea to pay me 100 an hour. And then he said, well, hey, what do you want for per diem for driving up? And I'm like, you know, I'm thinking, you know, like a typical broke dick. Oh, you know, 40, 50 bucks. And he's like, I'll just pay you 150 each time you drive up. And I drove about an hour and 10 hour and 15 minutes to get there. So wrapping up a couple hours of time, well, guess what? They all hung out, same country club. Next guy, you know, his wife buys him a rating for Christmas. You know, they buy each other yachts and stuff like, things like that. So the first guy says, well, you got this guy's got to pay the same as I do. So I would drive up there, they both paid me 150 per day. They both paid me 100 an hour. And I'd go spend, you know, half a day and come home with 5, 6, 7, 800 bucks. Now, you're not going to do that in the beginning, and I'm not saying it to brag. They came up with the pricing, but I was good at what I did, and they knew it, and they paid me for my time. And a lot of times people want you to be paid and they will pay you dearly. This isn't for the brand newbie, but yes, to answer your question, do a good job, do what's right, do the ground with them, go the extra mile and be the best instructor you can be, and you'll go far in this industry. All the people that can't get jobs and just continually whine in every video in the description box, they're all jaded, right? You know, life is what you make of it. It doesn't matter what profession it is. Being a helicopter pilot, driving a garbage truck, you know, it doesn't matter. It's about how much effort you put into it.

So there you go.

She's working on another one, getting ready to go up. So you get to thank Heather. This is her baby. I said, do it.

Here's the credit card.

Go get what you need, get some Velcro, and let's give it a try. And when I came in today and she showed me she was doing and what our options was, I was like.

Oh, hell, yeah, haven't sent us a picture yet.

Oops, just ran into the bench. Those of you that haven't sent us a picture yet, send it in. Don't worry if you've already sent us one, they are being reprinted. You're going back up on the wall.

If you updated anything, like, say you got your commercial from private and we already have your private picture. Make sure you send us your commercial too.

There you go.

Heather will appreciate it. It's Hogswalls, her baby and it's fun. She actually even did all the painting we got these things in. She did a super job on that and doing a great job on this. So like, subscribe, comment down below. Go to helicopterground.com below to check out our private commercial, instrument and CFI ratings or ground schools and we'll see you in the next video. Peace out. Hell yeah.