Kenny Keller breaks down the cost to become a commercial helicopter pilot: roughly $50,000 to $95,000 depending on aircraft and pace, with $75,000 as a typical middle estimate. He shares how to save money, like riding along on news flights for around $100 to $125 per hour or catching ferry-seat opportunities when helicopters move.
Questions this video answers
$50,000
$95,000
~$75,000
$100–$125 per hour
Chapters
I wanted to post a response to the question that I get a lot about commercial training, becoming a commercial helicopter pilot. And of course, everybody wants to know what's it going to cost? The cost is pretty much can range from. I'm going to throw out a couple of numbers. I'm going to say, I know guys have done it for around 50,000, and I know a guy that took almost 100,000, was 95,000 for all of his training, commercial CFI, instrument instructor, the whole work. So maybe even say in between there's somewhere around 75,000 probably to get to commercial pilot CFI. And again, it can vary so much on your what type of helicopter you're going to fly, how long it takes, how hard you study, how frequently you fly. Along with that, people ask, well, what about are there ways to save money for the commercial training after they get the private. And absolutely there are. There's a lot of different things that you can do to help knock that total cost down. When I worked in Cleveland, I trained Jeff Kaza, who I've done a video about, who's now a Columbus officer and will soon be flying for the aviation unit. And he did his private commercial in CFI with me. And after he got his private and was going for his commercial, he would go to California and went out to Los Angeles. And there was a place out there where he could go along in a Jet Ranger when they were going out and doing news reporting. And he flew with an instructor, and instructor would let him fly, and he was able to log time in the aircraft while they were out doing news reporting and doing some kind of filming. And in turn, he got a really cheap rate, like $100, $125 an hour to log helicopter time. And on top of that, it was turbine time. So there's a lot of different things like that a guy can do to save money to get through all your training. And there's other ways. You have to do the research, get online and get familiar with the different helicopter websites. But there's a lot of people that offer ferry flights. Like they're moving a helicopter from point A to point B. We'll just say Cleveland to Florida, and they'll sell seat time for so much per hour you can go along. Usually you're responsible to pay for your own way back home, but you can get a pretty good chunk of time in an aircraft by going along on some of these different things and buying that seat on the aircraft. So there are a lot of things a guy can do to save money and get through the training. Bottom line, if you want to do it and you can get there, you can. So hopefully that answers that question. And we got a couple more coming up here pretty shortly, so thanks for tuning in as always. And if you like this, please hit the like button and feel free to leave any comments. Thanks.
