Stick In Your Hand. Sky All Around You.

Enrolled students fly the DA20-C1 at $179 an hour, wet, on package pricing — the same single-engine rate as our Cessna 162 and Piper Warrior. Wet means fuel is included, with no separate fuel bill after a flight. The hours are built into the course, so the real number is the programme price: Private Pilot $10,900.

It is a different class of airplane. The DA20-C1 is a modern composite aircraft with a fuel-injected 125 hp Continental IO-240, a control stick, a bubble canopy, a Garmin 430 navigator and a 130–138 kt cruise — the fastest trainer on our line. The Skycatcher and the Warrior are riveted aluminium with yokes, and they are calmer airplanes for it. Demand for the DA20 is higher, so book it early. All three fly at $179 an hour on package pricing.

Lighter and more direct. A centre stick moves with your wrist rather than your arms, so control inputs become smaller and more precise almost immediately — most students adapt within the first twenty minutes and then find yokes feel vague afterwards. There is nothing harder about it, and no additional training or endorsement is required to fly a stick-controlled airplane.

Two — N306EF and N308EF. Both are identically equipped and maintained by our own shop on the field at Van Nuys Airport. They are the most requested aircraft on our schedule, so if you want a Saturday morning slot in one, book ahead.

Yes — the DA20-C1 is a fully certificated Part 23 trainer and our Private Pilot course ($10,900) can be flown start to finish in it, including night and cross-country requirements. Many students split their training between the DA20 and the Cessna 162 to manage cost, which is completely normal and requires no extra paperwork.

Yes. It is an excellent platform for the Commercial Pilot License ($15,900) manoeuvres — chandelles, lazy eights and eights-on-pylons are graded on precision and energy management, and a light, slick, stick-controlled airframe teaches both better than a heavier trainer does. Note that the Commercial certificate also requires complex-aircraft time, which is flown in our Piper Arrow — retractable gear and a constant-speed prop, per FAR 61.129.

It cruises at 130 to 138 knots depending on altitude and power setting — roughly 150 to 159 mph, and comfortably the quickest airplane in our training fleet. From Van Nuys that makes Santa Barbara, Camarillo, Palm Springs, Big Bear and Mammoth all realistic day trips, and it makes the long cross-country legs in the Private syllabus genuinely fun.

On a July afternoon at Van Nuys, yes — a bubble canopy is a greenhouse on the ground. In practice you brief with the canopy open, taxi with ventilation on, and the moment you are rolling it is a non-issue; in cruise the airflow and altitude sort it out entirely. Our students who fly the DA20 in summer overwhelmingly schedule early morning or evening lessons, which is also when the air over the valley is smoothest.

Yes. Book a discovery flight — you will be in the left seat with the stick in your hand and an instructor beside you, over the Hollywood Sign, downtown Los Angeles and the coast. If you enroll within 24 hours, 100% of the cost credits toward your training. You can also start on the ground with a 1-hour Redbird MCX simulator demo for $189, which carries the same Garmin 430 as the DA20's panel.

Los Angeles Flight School is at Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) — 7900 Balboa Blvd. Suite 108A, Van Nuys, CA 91406. We are open 9 AM to 9 PM, seven days a week. We serve Encino, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Pasadena and the greater Los Angeles area.