That's a common misconception. Plane rental is charged by the time the magnetos are energized which in turn is measured by the Hobbs meter. Having said that, many places often have a minimum number of hours per day to prevent someone taking a plane all weekend for two billable hours.
Flying as a hobby is a lot like boating - the happiest day of your life is when you sell your boat/plane. The second happiest day is when you buy it. It can be woefully expensive because much like a house it's easy to do just one more thing / buy just one more gadget and think well if I just spent a little bit more I could have Y instead of X.
I wouldn't discourage you against taking a discovery flight but I'm saying this in the interest of full disclosure. Back when I learned to fly there was a running joke about the $100 hamburger because unless you had specific goals for your license that's all it was good for - a quick jaunt to the next town over to keep current and have some grub. Considering rental prices these days I guess that's more like a $300 hamburger.
If you learn to fly, you'll pay a rate based on the type of airplane and whether aviation gas is built into the price. After a very quick Google looks like in California prices start at $130+/hr. You need 35-40 hours* just to get the first of your licenses which will let you fly a small plane in good weather. Realistically once you have a ticket any place renting a plane will want you teach you how to fly the model they're renting you, so tack on a few hours more to get signed off in the plane you want.
Once you rack up enough club membership dues or hours in a rented plane you'll start thinking it would just be easier to own. That's when things get really interesting because you have to decide if this is a hobby or a serious hobby.
*When I got my PP-ASEL, you had two choices - a rigorous, structured 35 hour course or a looser 40 hour minimum course. That's 40 hours of flight time and instruction, not total hours in a classroom. Considering you're a hacker news poster I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have the disposable income, education and predisposition to dedicate a couple of weeks to doing nothing but learning to fly. If you can manage that I recommend the 35 hour course: it's intensive but the cheapest option because you won't be paying by the hour to train and retrain skills that get rusty by only flying once or twice a week. Flying is very much a mechanical skill and it has to become second nature before you can learn to multitask and take care of all the other things you need to do, otherwise you're perpetually "behind the airplane."
Anyway again if you decide to seriously pursue it I'd say try a discovery flight first and then dedicate a chunk of time to knock it out. It is the fastest way to get it done, which means it's the cheapest way to get it done.
Also consider that if you want airline-like regularity, you need an IR (Instrument Rating), which is sometimes (usually?) harder and more expensive than the PPL itself. Then you want to consider if you want to fly your family in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) at night. Many people including me would only want to this is a twin engine aircraft or at least an aircraft equipped with a ballistic parachute (this means a Cirrus SR22 or similar). Anyway, both options is at 2-4x the cost of a the typical $130/h rental.
Not as of a big issue in CA, but in the winter, you also probably want to cruise above the freezing level, so add to this a FIKI (Flight Into Known Ice) certified aircraft. Again, more $$$.
In the end though, flying your own aircraft is an immensely gratifying experience on many levels, and despite all of the caveats above, I wholly recommend getting your PPL.
Yes, with just your PPL in hand, you might have to wait out some weather or choose conditions based on your experience and equipment, but as long as you know those limitations, it's actually not a big deal, especially in California.
All excellent points... particularly the part about how gratifying it is to fly. It is amazing.
I just wanted to expand on the part about getting your ticket in 35 hours by doing it via Part 141: if you can hack it then you'll be better prepared for instrument training which (IMHO) is also structured and rigorous. And as you stated requires even more hours, so anything to help reduce costs is (again, IMHO) welcome.
>Don't leave out the part where you get the excitement of learning how to fly a fucking plane all by yourself though.
Absolutely dude! That is the best part. Although the destinations it opens up and how much closer they are is also priceless. If I had the means I'd be hopping into a Grumman Tiger or Mooney 201 and haring off to other parts of Texas or Louisiana every weekend.
One of my fondest memories is taking a Mooney 20C for a family reunion. Twelve hours of driving turned into a 5.5 hour rental which included flying there, back and some touch and goes so I could get endorsed for the plane.
Up until that point I'd never flown that high but when the Mooney growled up to 9,000 feet and the Texas summer heat fell away I was hooked. In no time at all my instructor and I descended to pass over the city park to wing waggle a few times before landing to find one of my uncles grinning and waving as we landed. It was magic.
Interesting. I might well pursue it. I never even considered it because it just seemed like an insanely expensive hobby that I could never hope to afford (even more so than boating).
Now that I work across the street from KPAO (Palo Alto) (and yes, I'm sure it's more than the $130/hr here!) I'm more and more interested. Hell, even 10 or 15 years ago I assumed it was a minimum $10k endeavor. It might actually be cheaper than I expected to check that first box.
Flying as a hobby is a lot like boating - the happiest day of your life is when you sell your boat/plane. The second happiest day is when you buy it. It can be woefully expensive because much like a house it's easy to do just one more thing / buy just one more gadget and think well if I just spent a little bit more I could have Y instead of X.
I wouldn't discourage you against taking a discovery flight but I'm saying this in the interest of full disclosure. Back when I learned to fly there was a running joke about the $100 hamburger because unless you had specific goals for your license that's all it was good for - a quick jaunt to the next town over to keep current and have some grub. Considering rental prices these days I guess that's more like a $300 hamburger.
If you learn to fly, you'll pay a rate based on the type of airplane and whether aviation gas is built into the price. After a very quick Google looks like in California prices start at $130+/hr. You need 35-40 hours* just to get the first of your licenses which will let you fly a small plane in good weather. Realistically once you have a ticket any place renting a plane will want you teach you how to fly the model they're renting you, so tack on a few hours more to get signed off in the plane you want.
Once you rack up enough club membership dues or hours in a rented plane you'll start thinking it would just be easier to own. That's when things get really interesting because you have to decide if this is a hobby or a serious hobby.
*When I got my PP-ASEL, you had two choices - a rigorous, structured 35 hour course or a looser 40 hour minimum course. That's 40 hours of flight time and instruction, not total hours in a classroom. Considering you're a hacker news poster I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you have the disposable income, education and predisposition to dedicate a couple of weeks to doing nothing but learning to fly. If you can manage that I recommend the 35 hour course: it's intensive but the cheapest option because you won't be paying by the hour to train and retrain skills that get rusty by only flying once or twice a week. Flying is very much a mechanical skill and it has to become second nature before you can learn to multitask and take care of all the other things you need to do, otherwise you're perpetually "behind the airplane."
Anyway again if you decide to seriously pursue it I'd say try a discovery flight first and then dedicate a chunk of time to knock it out. It is the fastest way to get it done, which means it's the cheapest way to get it done.