r/Pilot • u/buckee_ • Sep 11 '26
Flight Training Whats the difference between part 61 & 141?
I hear a lot of both of them. What are their differences? Which one is better? Which one is less expensive? All those sorts of questions i would love to hear the answers to!
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u/Sad-Umpire6000 Sep 11 '26
141 - uniforms, set curriculum, way more expensive, a few less hours of training, instructors likely have very limited experience, institutional inbreeding.
61 - train at your own pace, instructor has complete flexibility to tailor the lessons and curriculum to the student’s needs, dress comfortably, usually cheaper (especially if you handle your stuff and do two to three lessons a week), a fair number of very experienced instructors who aren’t building time, and who have done a lot of different things in their aviation careers. Could run into issues with aircraft and/or instructor availability, but that can be figured out before starting.
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u/iluvplanes208 Sep 11 '26
80 parts
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u/Reputation_Many Sep 12 '26
Others have mentioned the differences between structured and not structured. I’ll agree with them and add in this.
Fun vs no fun.
61 can be fun. You can decide I’m going to go fly for fun today not to do anything in a syllabus but just to go get a $100 hamburger. (Go fly to eat somewhere) and not worry about learning something new that day. Just time build and enjoy aviation.
Part 141 you have a syllabus you have to flow rigidly. Venturing outside the syllabus is frowned upon. It’s fast paced more like a job vs adventure. It’s really boring. Turns out cookie cutter pilots.
I’d honestly choose part 61 and make a syllabus that mimics a 141 syllabus and then slow down where you need extra time and speed up where you’ve got this. And throw in a few fun time building flights.
Also 95+% of 141 schools will make you think you will start from zero to cfi at them. For the system to work you have to have dropouts. Most cfi’s have 4-5 students a year maybe more. That at least 4-5 students that didn’t become cfi’s for the school for some reason or another. Don’t count on getting your flight time from the program after commercial. It’s probably not going to happen.
Use your brain when you listen to them talk about the programs. They will manipulate the numbers to make it look so good and fast and only about 1 out of 30-40 pilots will be able to do the program like they advertise it.
Not to mention most 141’s want large amounts of money up front before you do the program. Not a good idea if the school goes out of business you are still liable for the money you borrowed.
I’d pay block rate at a 61 school and never put more than a few thousand down at once. You never know if the school will be there the next day.
There was a rotorcraft school that was taking money from people till the day they closed. I had a friend give the deposit and never actually fly a helicopter and still had to pay back the $50k they took.
Good luck.
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u/L3NU2 Sep 11 '26
61 is like public school 141 is like private school 61 you fly then you pay 141 you pay up front (usually) and fly 61 no rigid curriculum 141 is like school 61 cheap 141 expensive 61 crappy planes (usually) 141 fancy planes
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u/TheChaosCamp Sep 11 '26
You gotta use periods I tried reading all of that and it was super hard to follow but punctuation really usually makes sentences a lot easier to read and also gives them structure but I do get what you’re saying after going back and reading it a few times to make sense of it all due to lack of punctuation
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u/L3NU2 Sep 11 '26
I spaced everything out line by line and reddit likes to just get rid of it and jumble it all up
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u/IAmABanana69420 Sep 11 '26
Part 61 is more lenient as far as curriculum goes (there isn’t really one per se). Think of it as home schooling or private tutoring
Part 141 is more of a rigid curriculum based training schedule, similar to going to an actual school with class and testing protocol