How much does is cost to become a Commercial Pilot?

Hello, I'm Kenny Keller, the creator of Helicopter Online Ground School and author of the Amazon bestseller Helicopter Checkride. And today I want to talk about the cost to become a commercial helicopter pilot. We get this question a lot. So it really depends on many different factors, on what it's going to take and what it's going to cost to get to commercial pilot which helicopter you choose to fly, whether you're flying on the cheaper models like an R22, where the cost is low per hour, or you could be up in a turbine model spending over $1,000 an hour. So it really a lot of it depends on which aircraft you're going to be flying. And another big one is where in the world that you live. How close are you to the airport that you want to fly at? Maybe you've got an airport somewhere nearby that's got an aircraft and you won't have to travel much. Maybe you're going to have to travel quite a ways for your helicopter lessons. Maybe you're going to have hotel involved, driving time, fuel wear and tear in your vehicle. All these things play in the total cost of what it's going to take. How willing you are to apply yourself is another big one. You know, the ground school is part of the cost. The aircraft time, your dual instruction, your study time on your own. These all play into what it's going to cost you to get to be a commercial pilot. You're going to have to have 150 hours of flight experience. You're going to have dual time and ground time for your private. And then you're also going to have more dual instruction and more dual ground time for your commercial as well. So during that dual time, you're going to be paying for the aircraft and for the instructor, and then you're also going to have a certain amount of solo time. We're going to be in the aircraft alone. So there's the difference in between paying for just the solo time and paying for the dual time in the aircraft. So I'm going to give you some approximate figures on low end to high end. If you have 150 hours, let's say you got a really good deal on an aircraft at $200 an hour, that's pretty low, you might find that, but that's going to be about as low as you're going to get in that general vicinity. So if you had 150 hours at $200 an hour, right, there's $30,000. Let's say you had 50 hours of dual flight time with an instructor at 30 per hour, that's $1,500. And 30 per hour, that's kind of the low end of what an instructor is going to cost you. 50 hours of ground instruction at 30 per hour, there's 1500 dollars books, medical certificate, examiner fee, travel, etc. I just threw a number out there of 1500. Could be more, could be less, but that's a round number you could use for the extra stuff that you're going to definitely be spending money on. So there's 34,500 on the low end of things. Let's go to a higher cost aircraft and instructor. Let's say you're renting a helicopter at $400 an hour, an instructor at $60 an hour, 150 hours at $400 an hour, there's $60,000 just for aircraft time. Then let's talk about the 50 hours of flight duel, which you may need more, you may need less, but let's use 50 hours at 60 an hour, which their instructors that charge that. There are instructors that charge more than that. So the 50 hours at $60 an hour, there's 3,000. So let's add 50 hours of ground school at $60 an hour, there's another $3,000. So there again, there's $1,500 in extra stuff, fees, books, whatever the case may be. And there's a grand total of 67,500. $500. So there's a difference between low end and high end of 34,500, which would be cheap. 67,500. That's a pretty good ballpark figure. Then if you're going to go for professional pilot and you're going to add CFI onto that, that's even more money that you're going to spend. Instrument rating, instrument instructor. That's more money on top of that that you could also spend going for the professional pilot program. Are there ways to save money? Yes, there are. News reporting is an example. I had a student years ago that would fly to California and go along on news reporting for a reduced rate to build time for his commercial for I think around 1:25 an hour. So there's a one way to save money. Helicopter ferry flights. If you can get in a ferry flight where somebody's moving an aircraft from point A to point B, you get to go along for a discounted rate. That's another way to save money. When I did it, the company I was training with had a pipeline patrol and at the private pilot level, you could go along for I think it was like 50 bucks an hour or something at the time, or $75 an hour, which was a great deal. And I did about 40 hours of the time I needed for my commercial going along on the pipeline. So I saved a considerable, about considerable amount of money doing that. A lot of people will say, well, a helicopter company pay for my training. It does happen, but that's very rare. I only know of a couple instances where somebody's company paid for their rating. It doesn't happen very often, so I hope that helps. Please give us a like Please put your comments down below Again just to kind of give you a ball, ballpark figure of what it's going to cost. That's low end to high end just to give you an idea. And so another way you can save money in your flight training is to use our helicopter online ground school. There's a link below or beside or above this video. Fl find the link, click on that and you can go to an information video that explains our helicopter online ground school in detail. And that is one way that you can definitely save money is by having this additional help to study the ground knowledge. We have one young man who did pretty much all the ground training with our online ground school before going to his flight school and showed up and did his private rating in three weeks because he had all of the ground knowledge. So again, please give us a like, give us a share. Leave your comments down below and we'll see in the next video.