FAA requirements are 40 hours to get your private license, but it typically takes around 60-80 hours, and the most commonly quoted approximate price I've always heard is about $10,000 for everything: ground school, flight training, materials, etc.
C++ is used today in any field that requires performance, like Gaming for instance. C++ is also very reliable and is the prime choice for embedded systems, which must be reliable to work and not cause exceptions. C++ can be used to create virtual...
The same reasons as above. The main reason why it's still used, in my opinion, is that it lacks the dreadful garbage collection system, which increases performance by a notable amount. Not only that, C++ is capable of developing cross-platform code without dependencies (like C# and the .NET Framework, and Java and the Java Run-Time Environment)