About pilotsradar
An independent guide to flight schools for people choosing where to train for a private pilot licence. Built in Cyprus, starting with Cyprus, expanding across Europe.
Why it exists
Choosing a PPL school means comparing numbers that schools present differently: one quotes a package, another an hourly rate, a third an “estimated total” that leaves out the exams and the licence. Forum threads are full of people asking what training really cost. We went through that process ourselves and decided to write the answers down properly, school by school, with every figure dated.
How the data is collected
- We contact each school directly, by email or phone, and ask for the same set of figures: hourly rates by aircraft, what the package includes, theory format and cost, exam, examiner, licence and skill test fees, realistic hours to licence, trial flight price.
- We put the answers through one formula, described on the methodology page, so a package school and a pay-as-you-go school land on the same scale.
- Before a listing goes live we send it to the school and ask it to check. Corrections are made the same day. Listings a school has confirmed carry a “confirmed by the school” mark; the rest say “not yet confirmed”.
- Every listing shows the date its figures were stated. We re-check prices periodically and keep the history, so a change in price is visible as a change, not silently overwritten.
What we do not do
- We do not scrape prices from directories or marketing pages. If a school has not told us a figure, the page says “not stated”.
- We do not reproduce correspondence, name individual staff, or publish discounts offered to one person.
- We do not take payment from schools for the base listing, and the base listing will stay free. If paid extras such as highlighted placement are introduced later, they will be labelled as such and will not change the figures or the ranking.
- We do not give financial or legal advice. The numbers are what schools told us, arranged so you can compare them.
For schools
If you run a school and a figure on your listing is out of date, email hello@pilotsradar.com and we will fix it the same day. If you are not listed yet and train for the PPL in Europe, write to us with your rates and we will add you.