A huge number of Swiss pilots read EuroGA. Maybe someone can post some detail?
Peter wrote:
I wonder what you do get. AFAIK they do teach people to fly through the canyons (what most call “mountain flying”) but otherwise do people come out able and confident to do substantial foreign trips?
Yes, you do get an alpine introduction which is quite elaborate. At least two full days of flying in the alps with landings. Also most schools will fly abroad due to the fact that they can use duty free fuel on training flights.
Confident, I don’t know too many new pilots so I can’t tell you that upfront. Most schools today do stuff like the intro to Zurich (which is one of the more complex controlled places to go to) and most students in Switzerland will see places near the border for the above mentioned reasons. All of them will end up with English RT and most with LP4.
I have not heard from or seen many people who will do their training near the border to save cost mainly for the lack of opportunity. There are not that many airfields with flight schools nearby the border so people will find the time to drive there, have their lessons and come back home. Most Swiss students train at the airfield nearest to them. The only two airfields I know which do regularly attract Swiss Customers are Annemasse near Geneva (I believe there is one more in the Rhone Valley nearby) and Hohenems in Austria, where people who live close by will go either for training or for renting. For the most part, people do have an airfield nearby and will predominantly try to train there, so they can have a lesson after work or fit the family in better.
One of my good friends just finished his PPL with 45 hours at Fricktal Schupfart. I can try to ask how much it cost all up. But I think the costs are pretty much realistic.
Just saw the comments re FI salary: Yes, instruction time starts when meeting at the briefing and ends with the end of de-briefing. I personally don’t see why that is wrong. Briefing, outside check, crew at stations before taxi and shut down, parking, paperwork, e.t.c. is work as much as flying the airplane. And btw, what the schools are calculating (eg 90chf/hr) is not really what these people earn. Some of this is the school’s share.
Peter wrote:
I guess the Swiss case is just a “Swiss case” i.e. Switzerland is expensive If the standards are higher, that is a worthwhile point to discuss however (what is different).
I was astonished by that C152 at 210 per hour. It must be golden. I can understand higher rates for instructors, if the market is willing. I guess mechanics are expensive as well. And I can understand how they might not care about higher costs, but I have trouble understanding how those people accept C152. If it must be a Cessna, then at least C172 with G1000, that’s what I would expect from a posh, as Brits would say, school.
LeSving wrote:
One has to wonder what kind of super instructors they have in Switzerland
This is an interesting comparison given that Norway isn’t cheap either (I mean in general) and you also have challenging terrain (from what I was told, helicopter training in Sweden historically included mountain flying, I guess something similar might be true in Norway).
is not really what these people earn. Some of this is the school’s share
Of course; same in some other places where a PPL still costs the more usual 10k but the instructors get paid peanuts. The instructor fee goes mainly to the school. In France the total PPL training income is used to subsidise the “club” activities for members, who get relatively cheap flying (and with some perverse incentives being created). In the UK the school makes money mainly from the self fly hire income (with or without an instructor) so they discourage people to get into syndicates.
Years ago, here, £15/hr and a £10/day retainer were not unusual for instructors. The £15/hr was also common in France, last time I heard. Obviously nobody can live on that. The instructors were doing it to build hours (no idea why, but they would vanish the instant they got a RHS job). Some others are doing it because they just like to fly and this way they don’t have to pay for it. Some others do it as a way to “put something back into society”.
I was astonished by that C152 at 210 per hour. It must be golden
2 years ago I was paying £250 (well over €300 especially then) per 1.2hr lesson in a PA28-161 for my son. Not too different!
I used what i think is/was one of the most expensive places around London (for PPL only – White waltham), and think I did it under 10k. I usually tell people who ask me that they have to be comfortable committing 10k for licence. Might be a bit less, or a bit more, but it’s a good ballpark figure.
I am surprised at the high figures I see for Ground School / training though. 2k ? I think I paid about 7*30 pounds in books, + simplifier. Confuser was free (It wasn’t published any longer so had to get it in the form of PDFs (still have them if anyone interested)).
Re training times took me about 3.5 month (Jan → may) to do 95% of PPL, (working full time) but:
- Had just moved to london and didn’t know many people, and decided wouldn’t go out until done
- I’d spend saturdays and sundays at the club (and to save money would rack up 4h of extra commute). They had facilities on the club but full with staff. People knew me as the “green brompton guy” as i’d show up at 8am at the airfield on my little bicycle (commute was east london → paddington by cycle, then train, then cycle to airfield)
- 2 Flights a day (sometimes more)
- study in between flights / in train ride. train, no ground school (If I had to do all with groundschool it would have taken about a year!).
- don’t be too scared by exams (once 3 in a weekend but was drained after that).
Martin wrote:
I was astonished by that C152 at 210 per hour. It must be golden.
210 CHF is quite high for a C152, but it may well be the cost. These things have had to go through SID inspections and if commercial, have to do prop revisions every 6 and engine every 12 years without any extensions and there may be other overhead. Still, the school I work with use Jodels and they rent them for 190 CHF / Flight hour (airborne to landing).
I am not an instructor so far (Though I might want to do that eventually) but I think the going salary in Switzerland is around 60-70 CHF, which is roughly the same an English Teacher is asking for private lessons. For theory lessons, it’s around 45 I think. CHF, not Euros. Considering that a cleaning lady makes 35 to 40 per hour, that is quite low I believe. (That is pre-tax btw, a good 10% will come off that). It may also be noteworthy that the average salary (Pre Tax) in Switzerland is somewhere around 5k CHF monthly, which puts things a bit into perspective I think.
Martin wrote:
14 days (divided into two stays) is I think manageable even for an employee
I get 30 days paid vacation, if I were doing it now I’d go somewhere sunny for three weeks and just crack it out.
AF wrote:
Woah. That seems like a lifetime to me. It took me about 10 weeks to get my PPL and I have a friend who did it much faster.How do people make it taking lessons for a year? I would have forgotten so much between lessons…
Well first, as I said, the instructors instruct only in their free time, so going up for two or three lessons per day for any series of days is simply not possible. Usually many students have family and jobs or companies and are only capable to get into flying for one afternoon and one evening (for groundschool) per week. If the weather is bad then, there is not much to do. Taking off for any number of weeks without the family isn’t manageable either for many families, especially when they need to grow into aviation aswell as the new pilot does. We make it a point to include the families on club events, but also within regular flight training. You need to experience different loading of the aircraft anyway and taking the family along on navigation flights or flights to other airports has proven to raise acceptance in the families, especially for flying together after the license.
Since we are a club, you get the benefit of cleaning and maintaining the aircraft, so you can work on the mandatory checks together with our mechanics, and learn much more about the aircraft and flying than it would be possible from any compact course. There are fly-outs, story-telling, exchange of experience where even our students can contribute. You get an entrance into a flying community, rather than just a license. And you are not left alone after getting the ticket. You can rent from the club, but you can get assistance and advice on an own aircraft, or you can train further towards the night rating. aerobatics, glider flying- and towing, get your microlight license…
To pull off effectively two or three lessons on one day, you have to concentrate very much on the flight training, especially the preparation of the next lesson and the de-brief occupies the time between the lessons. This is simply not possible if you learn to fly in your free time parallel to work and family. This is, why some people take longer and some don’t.
In 2010, I thought PPL training was steep in Vancouver, Canada, but I guess it is all relative. My PPL was $10k CAD (~7.6k CHF) and prices don’t seem to have gone up. I started on 10 April, and was ready for my flight test on 6 June. Weather held off the final test until 24 June, so it might be a bit difficult to do on an extended holiday. Probably best to go to Arizona or Florida if you really want to crank it out.
Despite the higher costs, I quite like Switzerland. Unlike Canada, you can find a hut in the mountains which will serve you a beer, coffee, or sparking water after a hard climb. I guess it all comes down to preferences, but if I lived in Switzerland, I might not want to leave :-).
However, I do note that for the cost of PPL training in Switzerland, you could get a heli-license in the USA. East Coast Aero in Boston markets R44 flight training at $379 USD with an instructor! (Or $245/hr for an R22 at Jerry Trimble in Oregon!!) I think I might make an extended trip over in the near future…
Martin wrote:
This is an interesting comparison given that Norway isn’t cheap either (I mean in general) and you also have challenging terrain (from what I was told, helicopter training in Sweden historically included mountain flying, I guess something similar might be true in Norway).
It must be a very different culture. PPL is very much a club thing here, under NLF. Instructors are either CPL/ATPL looking for a job, or they have given up getting a pilot job, working with something else and instructing in their spare time, or (often early) retired persons who do this for fun. Although I got my PPL at a small GA “airline/taxi” company. A couple of guys there started PPL school to have something to do during a down period.
Don’t know about “mountain flying” in helicopters, I’m not sure what exactly is meant by “mountain flying”, or why you should have special training. Around here there are mountains in all directions, except west, then you get to Iceland after some hours, if you don’t run out of fuel first 
