Redbird Simulator Session — Booking Confirmed
Three steps — and no weather to worry about
This is the simplest booking we do. Nothing about it depends on the sky.
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Your confirmation arrives in writing
An email with your date and time. Keep it — it is the only thing you need to turn up with, along with yourself.
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We call the day before to confirm your timing
Same courtesy call as any booking, minus the weather conversation, because there is not one to have. We are confirming that you are still coming, what time you are arriving, and what you would like to get out of the session.
Tell us on that call if there is something specific you want to try — a particular airport, an approach, an emergency, or just “I want to see if I can land it”. The instructor will set the session up around it.
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You come to Suite 108A and walk straight to the simulator
No ramp, no walkaround, no aeroplane to pre-flight. The Redbird is inside the building. You will be flying within minutes of arriving.
Here’s where to come
LA Flight School7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A
Van Nuys, CA 91406 Suite 108A
Getting to the right door
7900 Balboa Blvd is a shared multi-tenant hangar complex at Van Nuys Airport, with several unrelated aviation businesses inside it. The address alone gets you to the car park — the suite number gets you to the simulator.
Head for Suite 108A. The Redbird is indoors, so once you are through that door you are already there.
Parking is out front. Cannot spot the entrance? Call (818) 290-8249 and someone will walk out and get you.
7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, Van Nuys, CA 91406 — use the Directions button for turn-by-turn.
Genuinely, almost nothing
This is the shortest list on the site — and worth reading precisely because of what is not on it.
Photo ID
Bring it. It is the only piece of admin.
Your glasses, if you wear them
You will be reading instruments and looking at screens. Bring whatever you normally read with.
Whatever you are comfortable in
You are sitting indoors in a moving cockpit. No ramp, no wing to climb onto, no dress code.
Your phone
You can photograph and film in the simulator freely, which you cannot always do in an aircraft.
Not sunglasses. Not layers.
The two things we tell every flight customer to bring are pointless here. You are indoors, in a controlled temperature, with no sun in your eyes.
No medical certificate is needed to fly the simulator, and no experience either. People who have never been near an aircraft and pilots keeping current both book this. There is no weight-and-balance conversation to have, because the Redbird is not going anywhere.
What an hour in a full-motion simulator is like
Nothing about this resembles the flight bookings — so here is the honest shape of it.
A short brief at the panel, not in a classroom
Your instructor will show you the cockpit before you climb in: what the controls do, what the instruments are telling you, and what you are going to try. Because nothing is at stake, they can be far more relaxed about letting you experiment than they could be in an aircraft.
You strap into a cab that moves
The MCX is a full-motion device — it pitches and rolls under you as you fly. Your inner ear believes it, which is the thing people are least prepared for. It is why simulator training works and why an hour in one is genuinely tiring.
You choose where you are taking off from
Van Nuys, because it is what you know. Or an airport on the other side of the world, in fog, at night, in a crosswind. The simulator does not care. Tell your instructor what you want to see and they will load it.
You fly it, and the instructor can pause the world
This is the part with no equivalent in an aeroplane. Get lost on an approach and the instructor can freeze the aircraft mid-air, explain what is happening, reposition you five miles back, and let you try it again. Three attempts at the same landing in ten minutes is normal.
You get to break things
Engine failures, instrument failures, weather that no sensible person would launch into. In a real aircraft these are handled with enormous care; in the Redbird you can simply see what happens. Most people ask for something to go wrong at least once — it is one of the best reasons to book a simulator over a flight.
A debrief you can actually learn from
At the end you sit down with the instructor and go back through the session — what you did, where it got away from you, what to try next time.
Ask your instructor about logging the session; they will give you the accurate answer for this device rather than a general one.
Weather cannot cancel this booking
Every other booking on this site is at the mercy of the sky. This one is not. The Redbird is indoors, and it flies in any weather Los Angeles produces. Marine layer sitting over the field all morning, gusting wind, rain in January — none of it touches your session.
In fact it works the other way round. On the days when the weather grounds the aircraft, the simulator is what people move to, because it is the one thing on the field that always goes ahead. If you have had a flight cancelled before, you already know why this booking exists.
And there is no medical certificate to arrange. You are not operating an aircraft, so nothing has to be signed off before you sit down and fly.
If you need to move the session for your own reasons, call or text (818) 290-8249 — 9 AM to 9 PM, seven days.
Ask us what you want to fly
The more you tell us in advance, the better we can set the session up. There is no wrong answer here.
Call the school
(818) 290-8249Best if you want to talk through what the session could cover.
Call nowAnswered 9 AM – 9 PM, 7 days
Send a text
(818) 290-8249Easiest for a quick request — an airport, an approach, a scenario.
Text usUsually the quickest during the day
Email us
alex@laflightschool.comGood if you would rather write out what you are hoping to get from it.
Open emailSame-day reply, most days
Now do it with the ground actually moving
Almost everyone who enjoys the Redbird wants to know what the real thing feels like. A discovery flight puts you in an aircraft at Van Nuys with an instructor beside you, doing the same job for real, from $229.
7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, Van Nuys, CA 91406 · 9 AM – 9 PM, 7 days.