In article R7Lqf.645848$_o.497629@attbi_s71,
Jay Honeck wrote:
That's 300% higher than the "ballpark" figure for around here.


Whoops -- sorry. I may have mis-read his post.

I thought he was posting his cost of learning to fly. Upon re-reading, it
does appear that $12K was his annual expense to *fly* -- which might include
aircraft maintenance.

You had it right the first time. That's what it cost me to learn to fly.
I could have probably squeezed it in around $9-$10K, had I not decided
to switch to newer-model 172's in the second half of the training (I just
got tired of all of the flaky equipment in the older 172s the flight
school had ... nothing unsafe, but just annoying).

So, you said that's 3x what your ballpark is where you are (in other
words, people in your area should expect to pay around $4000 to get
their private pilot). Is that the "ideal" figure, e.g., 40 hours in a
152, or is that what the average person who isn't a natural pilot
(e.g., me) actually pay? I think by the time I got my private I had
over 80 hours; clearly that was a factor, but I thought that the
national averagge was something like 75 hours. I'm geniunely curious.

--Ken