Add The Twin Without Changing Schools

The Piper PA-44 Seminole is a four-seat twin, and it is the aircraft the multi-engine rating and the MEI are flown in here. It sits on the same ramp as the Cessnas, on the same schedule, at the same hourly rate.

That matters more than it sounds. The usual arrangement for a school this size is to teach everything up to the commercial and then hand you to an operator across the field for the twin — which means a new checkout, a new instructor who does not know your flying, and a gap in the middle of the one rating where continuity helps most. Here the aeroplane changes and nothing else does.

A multi-engine rating is not a course in flying a bigger aeroplane. Straight and level on two engines is easier than a Cessna. The rating exists for the ten seconds after one engine quits, and almost all of the training time goes there: identifying which engine failed, keeping the aeroplane pointing where you want it, and being honest about whether continuing is a better idea than landing.

It is drilled because it has to be automatic. A twin with an engine out is less forgiving than a single with an engine out, not more, and the accident record for the rating is mostly about pilots who got the identification wrong under pressure. Expect to fly it until the response stops requiring thought.

It is the first thing anybody asks, and the reason it is hard to answer is that the regulation does not answer it either. Adding a class rating to a certificate you already hold carries no hour minimum: the rule asks for training in the required areas of operation, an instructor's endorsement that you are proficient, and a practical test. There is no forty hours to work towards the way there is for the private certificate.

That is why the courses advertised elsewhere as ten hours, or as five days, are packages rather than requirements. Ten hours is a fair planning figure for somebody current in a single-engine aeroplane. It stretches for anyone rusty, for anyone new to retractable gear and constant-speed propellers, and for anyone slow to make the engine-out drill described above automatic. Nothing about it gets shorter because the budget would prefer it to.

The other half of the answer is diary rather than flying. There is one twin, it is shared with the other students on it, and the checkride has to fit an examiner's calendar as well as yours. Flying here runs every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., so consecutive days are a question of the aeroplane's schedule rather than of the school's opening hours.

Denis oversees the multi-engine stages, as he does the commercial and the instructor certificates. If you are already training here, the person who set your syllabus is the person flying the twin with you rather than somebody meeting you for the first time on the day.

If you are coming from outside, bring the logbook to the first conversation. What is left to fly is a logbook question before it is a money question, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than after you have paid for an hour to find out.

Quoting the rating against your logbook is honest and also unhelpful if what you are trying to work out is whether you can afford it at all. So, while you find the logbook, here is the arithmetic to do in the meantime.

Ten hours of dual in the Seminole at the published rate is $1,100, because the aeroplane and the instructor are one line here rather than two lines that add up. That is arithmetic and not a quote — the real number is the one we work out from what you already hold — but it is the right order of magnitude to plan against. On top of it sit the examiner's fee, which is paid to the examiner, and whatever ground time you and your instructor agree you need.

It is worth knowing what the same ten hours costs elsewhere. Schools that publish a package for this rating mostly land between about $3,000 and $5,000 for the flying, with the twin billed well above the singles and the instruction billed separately again. The difference is not a discount. It is that the Seminole belongs to the school, so it is charged at the school's rate instead of at a rate set by whoever owns the twin across the field.

The hourly rate covers the aeroplane and the instructor and nothing else, here as everywhere on this site. The examiner's fee for the checkride is paid directly to the examiner, and the medical to the examiner who issues it.

The MEI range on this page excludes the examiner. It is a planning figure built from the school's own syllabus, not a package price, and what moves it is the same thing that moves every other figure here — how many hours you need, which depends on what you can already do when you arrive.

People ask what a multi-engine instructor earns before they ask what the certificate costs. The honest answer is that it varies by employer and we are not going to invent a figure for somebody else's payroll. The part that is arithmetic rather than opinion is what the MEI does to the price of multi-engine time.

Multi time is the currency of the hiring minimums, and there are two ways to come by it: buy it, or be paid to teach in it. A hundred hours of multi time bought at $110 an hour is $11,000. The same hundred hours logged from the right seat is worked rather than bought, and that, rather than the certificate on its own, is what the $4,500 to $7,500 above is being spent on.

What this page will not do is imply a seat at the end of it. The school is two instructors, and an MEI flown here is a certificate, not a job offer. If instructing is where you are heading, say so at the first conversation and we will tell you plainly where that stands rather than after you have paid for the course.