You are somewhere in your thirties, you earn decent money, and you keep opening this tab. Here is the version nobody selling you a course will write: 18 to 24 months of full-time training, roughly $89,000, a three-year income dip you have to survive, and a mandatory retirement age of 65 that makes every year you delay expensive.
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, 370 lb combined. Questions: (818) 290-8249, 9 AM–9 PM, seven days.
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...
You are not too old. Airline mandatory retirement is 65 under FAR 121.383(d), so a 35-year-old who starts today and is airline-eligible at 37 has a 28-year flying career ahead. A 45-year-old has 18. Both are long enough to be worth doing. Nobody at an airline interview will care what you did before, and nobody will care that you started late.
What people get wrong is not the age. It is the money — specifically the three years in the middle where you have paid for training, you are legally allowed to fly for hire, and you are earning less than you did before you started. That gap is the whole risk of this career change. Everything else is logistics.
So this page is organized around that gap: how long it lasts, how deep it goes, what makes it shorter, and the five kinds of person who should read all of it and then not do this. If you want the pay figures for the far side, they are on the airline pilot salary guide. If you want the stage-by-stage version, the pilot career roadmap has it.
Full-time training, three to five flights a week, at a field with 355 flyable days a year. Part-time doubles nearly every number below.
40 hours minimum under FAR 61.109, 60 to 75 in practice. From $10,900. This is where you find out whether you actually enjoy this, which is why it comes first and why you should not sign anything larger until it is done.
$11,700 and non-negotiable for a career. Flying in cloud on instruments alone is the single biggest step up in skill in the whole ladder, and it is where a lot of people discover how much study this career involves.
250 total hours required, so a large part of this phase is simply flying — cross-countries, night time, complex aircraft. The multi-engine add-on runs $5,100. At the end of it you can legally be paid to fly, and almost nobody will pay you very much yet.
The instructor certificates. This is the standard route to paid flying at low total time, and the CFI checkride has a reputation as the hardest in general aviation for good reason. It is also where you stop losing money.
Instructing 60 to 90 hours a month gets you from 250 to 1,500 in 12 to 18 months while earning $50,000 to $80,000 in Los Angeles. Restricted ATP paths can lower the requirement to 1,000 or 1,250 hours for qualifying military and university backgrounds.
At 1,500 hours with an ATP written passed, you are eligible to apply. Eligible is not hired — hiring is cyclical and we cannot promise you anything. What we can say is that everyone who gets hired went through the five steps above first.
The total is similar either way. What differs is certainty, speed, and whether you can keep your day job while you do it.
One price, one schedule, every certificate from first lesson through flight instructor. You know the number on day one and it does not move. This suits people who have decided, who can train full time, and who want the shortest calendar.
| Item | Figure |
|---|---|
| Program price | $89,000 |
| Covers | PPL through CFI |
| Typical duration | 18–24 months |
| Financing | Stratus Financial or in-house |
Buy one rating, finish it, then decide about the next. It takes longer, but you can stop after any stage having lost nothing but the price of that stage, and every stage price is a fixed number you can see before you start. For someone still holding down a job, this is usually the right answer.
| Stage | Cost |
|---|---|
| Private Pilot, Standard program | $10,900 |
| Private Pilot, Comprehensive program | $15,900 |
| Private Pilot, Premium (Cirrus SR22 Turbo) | $22,500 |
| Instrument Rating | $11,700 |
| Multi-engine add-on | $5,100 |
| Commercial and instructor stages | covered by the $89,000 program |
| Aircraft time for enrolled students | $179 / hour, wet, single-engine |
This is the table that matters and the one you will not find on a course brochure. Assume you currently earn $120,000 and stop working to train full time. Here is roughly what the next five years look like on the way through.
| Phase | Income |
|---|---|
| Years 1–2, training | little to no flying income |
| Years 2–3, instructing | $50,000–$80,000 |
| Year 4, first-year regional | $80,000–$100,000 |
| Years 5–7, regional captain | $115,000–$150,000 |
| Break-even against $120K | typically year 5–6 |
Income figures are industry-wide data from published pay scales and third-party reporting. They are not our figures, they are not a promise, and LA Flight School does not employ airline pilots or place graduates into airline jobs.
Airline pay, schedule, aircraft, base and days off are all set by one number: your date of hire relative to everyone else at that airline. Not performance. Not experience. Not how good a pilot you are. It is a list, you join it at the bottom, and you move up it only as people above you leave.
The practical consequence is that a delayed year is not simply a year of not flying. It is a year removed from the far end of the career, where the money is. A year at the bottom of a regional list is worth about $85,000. A year at the top of a major-airline widebody list is worth over $400,000. Postponing your start by twelve months deletes the second kind of year, not the first.
That is the strongest argument for starting sooner, and it is also the argument the industry over-uses to pressure people into signing. So use it correctly: it is a reason not to spend three years deciding. It is not a reason to skip the discovery flight, skip the medical, or borrow $89,000 in the first week.
If your household needs your current income to continue uninterrupted, this career change will hurt you. There is no version where you train full time and keep earning. Train part time instead, keep the job, and accept a three-to-four-year calendar.
An FAA first-class medical is the one item that can end this before it starts. Certain cardiac, neurological, vision and mental-health histories require special issuance or are disqualifying. Get the medical in week one, before you spend anything else.
Retirement at 65 means roughly 13 years of flying, most of it in the low and middle of a seniority list. The numbers rarely repay $89,000 plus lost earnings in that window. Do it because you want to fly, and the maths stops mattering.
Junior airline pilots sit reserve, work holidays, and often commute to base. Years one to five are the worst of it and they are unavoidable. It gets genuinely excellent later, and later is a long way away.
Airline hiring is cyclical and it has turned before, sharply. Anyone who tells you the next five years are guaranteed is selling. Plan for a career you would still want if hiring slowed for two years, because at some point it will.
The whole 18-to-24-month calendar depends on flying often. 355 flyable days a year is why it works here.
Van Nuys Airport, the fleet, and the instructors who run career-track students from first lesson to CFI.
LA Flight School — 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, Van Nuys, CA 91406. Open 9am to 9pm, seven days.
A career change is easier to commit to when you can see what you are buying. These are ours — owned, hangared and maintained at Van Nuys, not booked in from a broker when a lesson comes up.
Single-engine training on the Standard and Comprehensive programs is flown in the Cessna, Piper and Diamond aircraft. The Premium program is flown in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo with its full glass cockpit.
FAA-approved, fully enclosed, and it moves. For a career changer still holding down a job, it is the block of training that never gets canceled for weather and never wastes an evening.
Simulator hours are built into every private pilot program — 2 hours on Standard and Premium, 5 hours on Comprehensive.
The person who decides whether an 18-to-24-month calendar actually holds is your instructor. Every one of ours holds a commercial certificate or an ATP plus a CFI and a current medical, and is legally pilot in command on every flight.
There are eleven of them. If you are training full time around a career change, that matters more than anything else on this page — you are not queuing behind one person's diary for three flights a week.
You are matched to an instructor at enrollment and you can change if the fit is wrong. Career changers usually want the one who is blunt about progress, and we will tell you which of them that is.
The reviews that matter for a career changer are the ones about schedule and about the number not moving.
The most repeated compliment in our reviews is not the aircraft or the price — it is the debrief.
Eleven instructors and a fleet we own means three to five lessons a week is a plan, not a hope.
$89,000 at enrollment is $89,000 at the CFI checkride. Reviewers mention this constantly.
The order matters. Fly first, get the medical second, then talk about programs. Anyone who reverses that order is doing it for their benefit rather than yours.
Bring your calendar and your budget. Leave with a dated written plan and an honest answer about whether the timeline works for you.
A real lesson. You fly the aircraft, the hour is loggable dual instruction, and it is credited in full if you enroll within 24 hours.
Every certificate from first lesson through flight instructor, on one schedule and one price. Financing through Stratus Financial and in-house plans.
Program prices above are what we charge for training. FAA written exams, the checkride with a designated examiner and your medical are paid directly to third parties and are not part of a program price.
You have read the numbers. Now find out whether you like it. Sixty minutes over Los Angeles with your hands on the controls, logged as real dual instruction, and credited in full against any program if you enroll within 24 hours. Call (818) 290-8249 — we are open 9am to 9pm, seven days.
No. Airline mandatory retirement is 65 under FAR 121.383(d), so starting at 35 and reaching airline eligibility around 37 leaves a 28-year career. Career changers in their thirties and forties are among the most common students on career tracks, and airlines hire on hours, certificates and checkride record rather than age.
Starting at 45 gives you roughly 18 flying years before the age-65 limit, which is enough to reach a major airline and a captain seat but leaves less time at the top of a seniority list. It works financially if you can absorb the training cost and the three-year income dip. Past about 50 it becomes a decision about wanting to fly rather than about return on investment.
$89,000. That is our zero-to-airline program and it covers every certificate from the first lesson through flight instructor on one price and one schedule. Taking it one certificate at a time, the published prices are $10,900 for the Standard private pilot program, $11,700 for the instrument rating and $5,100 for the multi-engine add-on, with aircraft time for enrolled students at $179 an hour wet. FAA written exams, the checkride examiner and your medical are paid directly to third parties.
18 to 24 months from zero to airline-eligible if you train full time, then 12 to 18 months of paid hour building to reach the 1,500-hour ATP minimum. Training part time around a job typically takes three to four years to the same point. The variable is frequency, not ability.
Yes, and most career changers do at least the first two certificates that way. Expect three to four years rather than 18 months, and expect to fly at least twice a week — students who fly less than weekly spend the first 20 minutes of every lesson recovering skills they already paid for. Van Nuys gives you 355 flyable days a year and we are open 9am to 9pm, seven days, which makes early mornings and evenings workable.
Plan for two years of little to no flying income while training, then $50,000 to $80,000 as a full-time flight instructor in Los Angeles, then $80,000 to $100,000 in a first year at a regional airline. If you currently earn $120,000, break-even typically lands somewhere in year five or six. Those are industry-wide figures, not a promise.
No. US airlines dropped four-year-degree requirements years ago and hire on flight hours, certificates and record. A degree can help with restricted ATP eligibility at 1,000 or 1,250 hours through approved university programs, but it is not a requirement for the job itself.
Two things, in this order. Book a $229 discovery flight so you have actually flown an aircraft before making a career decision about it. Then book an FAA first-class medical with an aviation medical examiner, because it is the one thing that can disqualify you and it is far better to know in week one than in month eight.
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
