hello there my fellow aviators in today's video I want to show you how you can become a CFI in about 3 months starting from zero and then earn just shy of around $5,000 per month as a full-time hardworking flight instructor and then once you do that within a couple of years you'll have the opportunity to earn mid6 figures at the Airlines and I want to show you how you can do all of this for under $50,000 which is about half what the major puppy mill flight schools want to charge you to do it and the reason that I'm making this video is over the past 6 months as my channel has grown so quickly I have received some version of this question hundreds and hundreds of times so I thought it would be a terrific topic for a video so let's get into it all right in case this is one of your first time watching videos on my channel and you're thinking who the hell is this guy and why should I listen to him my name is Trent and in 91 days in 2023 uh I obtained seven different call it six different pilot ratings I got my instrument my commercial my CFI my multi-engine my CFI and my Mei and at the time I had a Canadian private pilot license which I had to convert to a us uh private pilot license so that was the seventh rating but I I speak from personal experience and so I want you to make sure that you know that in case you haven't seen my story before so so if you cut out the extra time that I took for the multi-engine rating the CFI and the Mei which technically you do not need to be able to earn money as a CFI uh and I didn't have a private Pilots license I could have gotten a private an instrument a commercial and a CFI in 90 days using the method that I'm going to explain to you in this video and that means that you potentially could do it as well I spent about $50,000 doing this if you want more details on my whole story and the journey and everything that made my channel so popular so quickly that's the most popular video on my channel and I'll leave a link down in the description and then you can get into all of the Nitty Gritty all right so let's talk about the budget the number one question that I get asked from people is how can I afford to make this happen and while everyone's situation is different I'm going to do my very best to give you advice that I believe and hope will be as applicable to as many of you as possible some of the advice that I'm going to give you may not sit well with you you may not like it you may not like what I'm about to tell you and if that's you well tough this is the reality of making the money work number one unless you have the cash on hand like I did or you have equity in your home that you could extract via a HELOC or you have have assets that you can sell you are going to need to slash the hell out of your expenses so what do I mean by that I mean get roommates consider van life live in an RV do whatever you can to lower what is most people's greatest expense on a month-to-month basis and that is your cost for housing and if you're saying well you know I can't do that for this reason or this reason or this reason well you know what you don't want it bad enough if you want it bad enough you will go live in a closet or you will go live in a van to get rid of that $2,000 a month rent and be able to live for a couple hundred per month the next thing you can do is you can sell stuff so many people are driving a big fancy pickup truck or a big fancy car and they have car payments cuz it's cool get rid of it get rid of the payments drive a $500 car I don't want to drive a $500 car well guess what you don't want to be a pilot bad enough ride around on your bicycle if you have to get a onewheel learn how to ride a skateboard you need to slash your expenses then you also may need to quit the job that you have because it gets in the way of the time that you need to dedicate to Flying and you might be saying well you know hey Trent I I can't quit my job well yeah you can U because all you have to do is say I quit or you might be saying well you know I got to have some form of of income well maybe you need a different job maybe you need a job like a waiter where you work in the evening and you actually make a very high per dollar amount you might be saying well I I don't want to be a waiter it's it's it's beneath me well then you don't want to be a pilot bad enough or maybe you don't have the personality to be a waiter or waitress fine then go be a consultant and well I don't know where to get clients well there's this thing called upwork and you can get there's all sorts of people who are looking for other people to do stuff for them and they advertise those gigs on upwork or maybe go get a security guard job where you sit in a box and do nothing so that you could be doing your ground school and getting paid to do it or maybe you go get a job with the local FBO pumping gas into airplanes so that you can meet a lot of people in the industry which could create opportunities for you the bottom line is there is a way to cut your expenses there is a way to free time up in your calendar it's just a question of whether you are willing to go through the pain and suffering required to make those changes in your life if you're not willing you don't need to watch any further in this video because that is the cold hard reality of it now let's talk about what you should be doing prior to flight school so let's say that you devise a plan you're going to say I'm going to spend the next 90 days selling stuff and trimming expenses doing all those life changes to get my expenses as low as humanly possible is there anything that I could be doing during that period of time to make progress and yes there absolutely is and you can take all the written exams you do not need to be going to flight school to take the written exams all and you can take all of them that you need before you start your flight training as a matter of fact that is exactly what I did and I have a video where it talks about how I passed four different FAA exams in three weeks I'm not saying you have to get it done in three weeks and I'll put a link to that video down in the description I recommend that you either use for for your PR prate pilot license I recommend that you use something called gold seal for your online ground school and then and that will also help you get ready for the Private Pilot written exam and then for every other written exam after that there is only one thing I recommend and that is shepher air they have test prep software that will help you to get ready to pass those exams in a very short period of time it is what I used so get all of that stuff done before you get into flight school because if you follow my Approach in Flight School you are going to be one very very busy beaver all right now let's talk about the flying there's two types of flight schools to choose from part one 61 and part 141 do not go to a part 141 school they will tell you that it's going to take you only this long and blah blah blah blah blah BS it is the expensive slow way to go through flight school there's lots of videos and articles on the internet about it I went to a part 61 school it is by far the best way to go next fly a minimum of 5 days per week in my case I flew five to six days per week and I tried to do as many flights per day as possible so what does that mean on a perfect day if weather didn't get in the way I did a flight in the morning I did a simulator ride in the middle of the day and I did another flight in the afternoon now maybe what I said earlier you got a part-time job maybe you can't do that second flight but you absolutely need to fly 5 to six days per week the reason for that is you're going to forget a lot less between your lessons and that means overall you're going to have to fly a fewer hours to become proficient which is going to save you money overall the other thing that I want to make sure that you understand is while you're working on your private Pilots license you're actually also kind of working on your instrument rating and your commercial pilots license at the same time and the reason for that is the commercial requires 250 hours of flying time so every hour that you're in the cockpit you're chipping away at that 250 hours and for your instrument rating one of the biggest time sucks for the instrument rating is the 50 hours of CrossCountry pilot and command time that you need and so even if you haven't had your Private Pilot check ride yet but you're at the point in your Private Pilot training when you're soloing and your instructor can endorse you you can be going out and flying those CrossCountry flights and chipping away at that 50 hours that will help you to pass uh or to meet the requirements for your instrument exam as well so very important fly fly fly as often as possible the next thing is to make that the whole thing go fast you need two really important things at your part 6 1 School is number one you need to have a school that has really great weather if you live in a place that rains a lot or has crappy weather move move somewhere else or you're simply not going to get it done and number two ideally you are going to be attending a school that has good access to dpes these are the examiners hired by the FAA to give you your check rides and one of the biggest problems at this point in time in Flight Training is the wait for dpes so when you're interviewing schools make sure that you ask do you have dpes that are regularly examining the students at school what do the wait times look like because that was critical to my uh having success at the school that I attended and I know a lot of you are going to ask what school did you attend Trent and they don't want their name mentioned in social media so I'm not going to tell you what it is and the reason is very simple they do not like training private Pilots the only thing that they really want to do is accelerated CFI training and accelerated multi-engine training and every time I mention their school in the comments their phone explodes and they get really pissed off because that's not the type of customer that they want so you will have to find a school on your own I do have a video about the whole Private Pilot training process that's been very very popular and if you want to dig deeper into all of the parts of the Private Pilot aspect of training then I'll put a link to that video down in the description all right now let's talk about the money so once you become a CFI work six days a week and at $25 an hour that means you're going to earn somewhere around $4 to $5,000 per month closer to 5,000 but there's going to be some days where the planes are broken or some days when the weather's not very good or what have you we are coming into summer or spring I should say and then summer at the time of this filming so really great flying weather but when you get to be a CFI if that's not your end goal if you don't want to stop there continue to work your ass off that's what I do and that's why I'm able to log months where I've got north of 150 hours going into my log book because I work my ass off now I am an independent CFI and so that's a topic for a whole another video because well it just is and so you can make a lot more money as an independent CFI but you need to have a way to get your students if there's enough demand maybe I'll make a video about that but we're going to set that aside for now so after a busy year as a CFI you're going to have pretty much all the hours you need to be ready for your interviews with the regional Airlines and then when you get hired at a regional you're looking at a salary of somewhere around $90,000 after a year at that Regional at least in the current environment they're forcing Captain upgrades about a year into it because the real problem is Captains not so much first officers and so if you're a firste captain at a regional I just looked at a pay table for Sky West it's about $140,000 per year okay so what if everything I've explained so far is just not fast enough or cheap enough for you there is another option and that is to go down in the light sport route there's pros and cons to that and luckily I have another video where I did another interview with a pilot with a woman by the name of Katie or her her name online is pilot ktie and she uh in that interview explains all the ins and outs of going the light sport route and it can get you to a cfis which means you can train other light sport Pilots a little quicker and a little cheaper but again there is pros and cons and I would encourage you to watch that video and then finally what do you do once you've got your CFI well number one if your goal is to get to the airlines which is my goal being a CFI is the very fastest way to build time every month and and and there there's a lot of people who are like there's all these forums about low time pilot jobs and people say I really want to get like in in the right seat of a King Air or a jet well put the brakes on that for a minute and think about that if your goal is to get to the airlines think about your earnings at the tail end of your career you're going to make be making 20 to $30,000 a month so every additional month that it takes you to start your airline career is in actuality costing you 20 to $30,000 at the tail end of your air CRI Airline career so what my advice to you is forget about flying right seed and part 135s King airs Jets whatever it is it might sound sexy but you're not going to get very many hours focus on being a CFI because it is the fastest way to build time about the only exception that I can think of if you're really really really don't want to be a CFI go be a survey pilot and go quote unquote mow the lawn in the air back and forth back and forth all day every day and you will be logging a ton of time and if you get really lucky maybe some of that time or a big chunk of that time could also be multi-engine time all right so that's it that's the formula to get to CFI and become a professional pilot in about 90 days for just shy of $50,000 I thank you very much for taking the time to watch the video and I look forward to seeing your questions and comments down below and if you're going to be a troll knock yourself out but I'm probably just going to delete your comment anyway thanks a lot guys byebye
