Camarillo already has a runway, so this page has to earn the forty minutes it asks of you rather than pretend the distance is not there.
Camarillo Airport is a good field, and it is not ours. LA Flight School is based thirty-five miles east at Van Nuys Airport, 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, and every lesson starts and finishes there. One long runway on the footprint of the old Oxnard Air Force Base, a tower that works set hours, warbirds in the museum hangar and room to fly circuits without a queue. If what you want is a private certificate for weekend flying around Ventura County, learn there and enjoy it. We would rather say so plainly than pretend the miles between your house and the Conejo Grade are not there.
People still make the drive, and generally for one reason: what happens after the private certificate. Van Nuys puts a complex single, a turbocharged Cirrus with a full glass panel, a twin-engine Piper Seminole and a full-motion Redbird MCX on the same ramp as the two-seat trainers. If your plan runs past a license into an instrument rating, a multi-engine ticket or a career, doing all of it in one place with the same instructors saves more than the fuel it costs to get here.
The weather works in the same direction. Camarillo sits on a flat coastal plain a few miles from the water, and from late spring the sea air pushes in overnight and sits there. The strawberry fields love it and flight schedules do not. Twenty-odd miles inland, on the far side of the Santa Monica Mountains, mornings open up considerably earlier and considerably more often. Canceled lessons are the real cost in flight training, because every one of them adds a relearning session you also pay for.
Who actually calls us from Camarillo: engineers from the sensor and semiconductor firms in the business parks off Las Posas, students at Cal State Channel Islands costing out an airline career, people connected to Point Mugu who already know what a clearance is, and certificated pilots who now want a second engine. The Airline Pilot Program is $89,000 from zero to airline-ready. The Standard Private Pilot certificate is $10,900. Both figures are printed rather than quoted.
Our Courses
Ten programs flown out of Van Nuys Airport, with real pricing on every one. Start with an hour at the controls, or go straight through to airline-hireable qualifications — it is the same ladder either way.
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Start Here
The first hour at the controls, over Los Angeles, with an instructor beside you. It is the entry point to every course below — and the cheapest way to find out whether flying is actually for you.
From$229
Open 9 AM–9 PM, Seven Days · (818) 290-8249
CertificateMost Popular
The one most people mean by “learn to fly.” Fly with an instructor, fly alone, then carry passengers on your own certificate.
Fly With An Instructor Fly Solo Carry Passengers $10,900 Enroll Now
Youth Program
Ages 10–15. For young people who want to start before they can legally solo.
$4,200 View Course
Milestone
Enough training to take an aircraft around the pattern alone. The day everything changes.
$5,500 View Course
Certificate
A real certificate with fewer hours and narrower privileges. The shortest honest route to flying yourself.
$8,400 View Course
Bundle
Private Pilot with flight time, ground instruction and study materials bundled into one price.
$15,900 View CourseBundle
The same certificate as Private, with the most flight time before your checkride. Eighty logged hours, ground instruction and materials, all in one price.
80 Logged Hours Ground School Included Materials Included $22,500 View Course
Rating
The rating after Private. Turns a fair-weather pilot into a useful one who can file, launch and land in cloud.
$11,700 View Course
Rating
For pilots already certificated who are adding a twin. Trained in our own Piper Seminole.
$5,100 View Course
Our Fleet
Diamond DA20, Cessna 162, Piper Arrow II and our Piper Seminole twin — all on the field at Van Nuys.
View The FleetThe Full Route
Zero experience to airline-hireable qualifications, in one continuous program rather than nine separate ones. Financing is available, and every hour of it is flown out of Van Nuys.
$89,000Financing Available
Free In-Person Tour Before You Commit
Book It Or Gift It
Every discovery flight below can be booked for yourself in the next few minutes, or bought as a gift certificate that is emailed within minutes and never expires. Same flight, same price, either way.
Most Given
One person, one instructor, and no audience. Hands on the controls from the left seat, briefed before you go and debriefed after you land.
Hands-On Stick TimePre-Flight BriefingLoggable Flight Time
Flight Length
$229Book Or Gift
Same Price
Two Seats
The same flight with a passenger in the back seat, briefed and on the intercom. Couples book it; so do parents who would rather watch than hear about it.
One Passenger SeatPiper Warrior Or ArcherHeadsets For Both
Flight Length
$299Book Or Gift
Same Price
The Nice One
The nicest airplane we put a first-time flyer in. Glass cockpit, air conditioning, leather seats, and a parachute built into the airframe rather than strapped to the person.
Turbocharged Cirrus SR22Air ConditioningWhole-Airframe Parachute
Flight Length
$499Book Or Gift
Same Price
Twin Engine
Two engines, and the airplane instrument-rated pilots move into when they start thinking about a career. Flown from the left seat with a multi-engine instructor.
Piper Seminole TwinMulti-Engine DepartureCareer-Track Instructor
Flight Length
$499Book Or Gift
Same Price
Gift It issues a real gift certificate, emailed within minutes, which never expires and credits in full toward training. Flights are limited to 180 lb per person, 360 lb combined. Questions: (818) 290-8249, 9 AM–9 PM, seven days.
The obvious one is the 101. Join it in Camarillo, climb the Conejo Grade out of the plain, and run east through Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Woodland Hills. Take the Balboa Boulevard exit in Encino and turn north. Balboa carries you straight up through Ventura, Burbank, Victory, Vanowen and Sherman Way with the airport boundary on your right. It is about thirty-five miles and forty to fifty minutes on a day when the freeway behaves itself.
The other one is worth knowing. Head out on Somis Road to Moorpark, pick up the 118 east and follow it through Simi Valley and over the Santa Susana Pass into the northwest Valley, then come south on Balboa. It is a similar distance, it avoids the Conejo Grade entirely, and on a weekday afternoon when the 101 through Calabasas has stopped moving it is quicker by a wide margin. Most of our Ventura County students learn both and choose depending on the time of day.
Parking is free and directly outside Suite 108A in our own lot. No structure, no barrier, no fee, and you can leave the car all afternoon during a long block lesson. Because the drive is the expensive part of your day, most Camarillo students book two-hour or three-hour sessions rather than single hours, which turns the journey into a smaller share of the total. Call (818) 290-8249 when you turn onto Balboa and someone will meet you.
A retractable-gear Piper Arrow II, a turbocharged Cirrus SR22 with a full glass panel, a twin-engine Piper Seminole and a full-motion Redbird MCX, all on one ramp with one maintenance operation behind them. Complex time, high-performance time and multi-engine time land in the same logbook, without you ever joining a second school.
Coastal Ventura County spends much of May and June under low cloud that arrives at night and leaves late. The Valley sits behind a mountain range and opens up sooner. Over a full course that is the difference between a certificate finished this year and one finished next, because every cancellation costs you a relearning lesson as well as the slot.
Van Nuys runs two parallel runways under a Class B shelf with Burbank a few miles east, so sequencing, clearances and transitions are ordinary from your first lesson. Pilots who learn on a quiet field and then try to enter the Los Angeles basin usually discover the gap at the worst possible moment. Here you never have that conversation.
Private, instrument, commercial, multi-engine and instructor ratings all happen at 7900 Balboa with the same instructors, the same aircraft and one set of records. Nobody has to re-explain your training to a new school at the point it matters most. If the plan is a career rather than a hobby, that continuity is worth more than the miles.
Basic training runs on the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior and the Diamond DA20, and the package you enroll on already covers the airplane and the instructor together. All three are light, unfussy airplanes that report a sloppy input immediately, which is the whole point of a training airplane. There are enough of each that an aircraft going into a scheduled inspection does not cost you a week, and for someone driving from Ventura County that reliability matters more than it would for a student who lives eight minutes from the gate.
Above them are the Piper Arrow II, with retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller for the complex time a commercial certificate requires, and the Cirrus SR22 Turbo and twin-engine Piper Seminole, which carries the $5,100 multi-engine package. The Redbird MCX, $189 to book on its own, is the piece Camarillo pilots tend to use hardest, because a simulator session can be booked at short notice, never cancels for cloud, counts toward the instrument rating, and flies eight approaches in the time an aircraft manages three.
Four things you pick out on a westbound navigation leg toward the plain.
The long cut where the 101 drops off the Conejo Valley onto the plain, with the lanes fanning out below you. It is the clearest terrain change on the whole route and the point at which the land goes flat and green.
Strawberry and lemon rows laid out in long parallel blocks all the way to the sea, with the plastic sheeting flashing white in low sun. Nothing else within fifty miles of Van Nuys looks remotely like it from the air.
Red tile roofs and a bell tower sitting on their own at the foot of the hills, once the Camarillo State Hospital. From above, the campus reads as a single Spanish-style block dropped into farmland.
The old Oxnard Air Force Base runway, still long and still pointing at the ocean, with the warbird hangars on the north side. You will land there on a cross-country before you are finished with us.
For most weekend private pilots, you would not, and we will say so. People make the drive when they want a complex single, a Cirrus, a twin or a full-motion simulator without changing schools partway through, or when they are costing out a professional career.
Thirty-five miles and forty to fifty minutes on the 101 over the Conejo Grade, or a similar distance on the 118 through Moorpark and Simi Valley. The 118 avoids the grade and usually wins on weekday afternoons. Most Ventura County students book longer blocks so the journey is a smaller share of the day.
It affects consistency more than safety. From late spring, mornings on the plain often stay under low cloud until midday, while the Valley opens earlier. A cancellation costs you the slot and the review time at the start of the next lesson. Across seventy hours that compounds.
Yes, routinely. It is a standard cross-country destination from Van Nuys, and flying into a Class D field with a part-time tower after learning under a Class B shelf is exactly the contrast a student needs. Plenty of our Ventura County pilots file their solo navigation legs back over their own house.
Standard is $10,900, Comprehensive is $15,900 and Premium is $22,500. The difference is instructor availability, simulator hours and built-in contingency, not the certificate at the end. Financing runs through Stratus Financial and we operate in-house payment plans. The in-person consultation costs nothing.
It is $5,100 as an add-on for pilots holding a private or commercial certificate, flown in the Piper Seminole. Expect Vmc demonstrations, asymmetric handling, drag management and real single-engine performance planning. Around ten days of concentrated flying is typical. To see the aircraft first, the multi-engine discovery flight is $499.
It is, but only if you can fly several times a week rather than fitting lessons around everything else. The program covers private, instrument, commercial, multi-engine and instructor ratings in sequence. We break the cost into stages rather than asking for it up front, and Stratus Financial lends against the course.
Parking is free in our own lot outside Suite 108A at 7900 Balboa Boulevard, with no gate and no fee. On a first visit you meet an instructor, walk out to the aircraft and ask whatever you like about cost, medicals and timelines. It takes about thirty minutes. Call (818) 290-8249.
Pick a morning when the 101 is quiet, drive the Conejo Grade, and see the Seminole and the Cirrus on the ramp before deciding anything. Call (818) 290-8249 for a free consultation, or book a discovery flight from $229.
The three private pilot packages, what each one includes, the financing options and a realistic timeline built around how often you can actually fly. Sent to you in one email. Nobody will pressure you.
Loved On Google
Every review below is real and shown verbatim, in the reviewer’s own words — written by the people who learned to fly here, not by us.
SAFETY FIRST
Very safety and detail oriented. Pre-flight briefing explained everything there was. To my knowledge, this flight school is exceptional in their ability.
DISCOVERY FLIGHT
I recently had the chance to take my first-ever discovery flight, and it was nothing short of amazing! From the moment I stepped into the cockpit, the...
SUNSET CIRRUS
It was a great flight! I did a sunset flight and Alex let us fly an awesome. Website was easy to book, and the plane itself was really fun to fly...
FLYING LESSON
We had a great flying lesson with Ralph and came away with a much better understanding of both the aircraft and the principles of flight. Ralph is a...
KIDS LUXURY FLIGHT
I got 2 luxury discovery flights for my kids. I wanted them to have the experience of flying. Our instructor Alex was amazing he made sure they feel...
HONEYMOON SURPRISE
Last minute booking to surprise my wife on our honeymoon. She had no experience with flying and was scared of flying, but Alex was very easygoing and knew...
FULL-MOTION SIM
Amazing flight school in van nuys airport. I have been a student here for the past few months and i could not be happier. I started doing a lot of...
DISCOVERY FOR TWO
I booked a Discovery Flight for Two for my girlfriend's birthday and it was the perfect gift for her. She couldn't have been more excited to get to...
SIMULATORS
Very professional and great airplanes. I love the flight simulators. The pricing is very fair compared to any other flight school
TEEN FIRST LESSON
We gifted our teenage son his first flying lesson. He was so excited! Alex greeted us and gave a reassuring brief that made us all feel comfortable and at...
FIRST-TIME FLYER
Flying is my husband's hobby and I was incredibly anxious and apprehensive about the discovery flight. However, I felt completely safe and at ease once we...
SAFETY FIRST
Very safety and detail oriented. Pre-flight briefing explained everything there was. To my knowledge, this flight school is exceptional in their ability.
DISCOVERY FLIGHT
I recently had the chance to take my first-ever discovery flight, and it was nothing short of amazing! From the moment I stepped into the cockpit, the...
SUNSET CIRRUS
It was a great flight! I did a sunset flight and Alex let us fly an awesome. Website was easy to book, and the plane itself was really fun to fly...
FLYING LESSON
We had a great flying lesson with Ralph and came away with a much better understanding of both the aircraft and the principles of flight. Ralph is a...
KIDS LUXURY FLIGHT
I got 2 luxury discovery flights for my kids. I wanted them to have the experience of flying. Our instructor Alex was amazing he made sure they feel...
HONEYMOON SURPRISE
Last minute booking to surprise my wife on our honeymoon. She had no experience with flying and was scared of flying, but Alex was very easygoing and knew...
FULL-MOTION SIM
Amazing flight school in van nuys airport. I have been a student here for the past few months and i could not be happier. I started doing a lot of...
DISCOVERY FOR TWO
I booked a Discovery Flight for Two for my girlfriend's birthday and it was the perfect gift for her. She couldn't have been more excited to get to...
SIMULATORS
Very professional and great airplanes. I love the flight simulators. The pricing is very fair compared to any other flight school
TEEN FIRST LESSON
We gifted our teenage son his first flying lesson. He was so excited! Alex greeted us and gave a reassuring brief that made us all feel comfortable and at...
FIRST-TIME FLYER
Flying is my husband's hobby and I was incredibly anxious and apprehensive about the discovery flight. However, I felt completely safe and at ease once we...
Reviews shown verbatim, exactly as each reviewer published them.
Aviation News
Notes from the flight line at Van Nuys — weather, regulation changes, checkride questions and the cost of training, written up as they come.
Open 7 days · 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Los Angeles Flight School
