Beverly Hills Pilot Training at Van Nuys Airport
Beverly Hills has no airport of its own, but it has Coldwater Canyon, and the far end of that road drops you within four miles of our ramp on Balboa.
Learning to fly when you live south of Mulholland
The awkward truth for Beverly Hills is geography. You are on the wrong side of the Santa Monica Mountains from every serious general aviation field in the county. Santa Monica is closer on paper, but its runway was cut to 3,500 feet in 2017 and the city has it slated to close at the end of 2028, which is not a foundation to build a four-year flying habit on. Van Nuys is over the hill, and over the hill turns out to be a fifteen-mile drive.
A lot of people in the 90210 already know the Balboa gate from the passenger side. Van Nuys is where the westside keeps its charter and business aircraft, so if you have ever left for Cabo or Aspen without going near a terminal, you have driven this road. Walking into Suite 108A to learn to fly it yourself is the same trip with a different ending. The ramp you taxi out onto is the one you have been driven across.
The students who come to us from Beverly Hills are usually short on time rather than short on motivation. Entertainment lawyers, physicians attached to Cedars-Sinai, agents, people running their own firm off Wilshire. The constraint is never money and almost never nerve; it is finding two clear hours twice a week. We schedule nine in the morning to nine at night, every day, because a 7pm lesson on a Wednesday is often the only slot a Beverly Hills calendar will offer up.
Flying back toward home is also a genuine lesson rather than a scenic detour. Crossing the Santa Monica Mountains southbound out of Van Nuys means descending beneath a shelf of the Los Angeles Class B airspace, with LAX arrivals stacked above and to the west. It is precise, disciplined flying in some of the most congested airspace in the country, and you get it from your first weeks rather than as an advanced module. Then Beverly Hills appears under the nose, laid out like a street map.
Programs, with the actual numbers
No packages hidden behind a form. These are the prices.
Standard Private Pilot
The full FAA Private Pilot Certificate. Where most students start.
Learn morePremium Private Pilot
The widest margin of hours for students who want no surprises.
Learn moreInstrument Rating
The rating that makes a licence useful in Southern California weather.
Learn moreTry it first — a discovery flight from Van Nuys
You fly the aircraft from the left seat with an instructor beside you. The time is loggable and counts toward a certificate.
Luxury Cirrus For Two
The SR22 Turbo, glass cockpit. 90 min $549, 120 min $699.
Learn moreRedbird Simulator Session
FAA-approved full-motion MCX, on the field at Van Nuys.
Learn moreBeverly Hills to 7900 Balboa Blvd, two ways
The canyon route is the one to learn. Take Beverly Drive north until it becomes Coldwater Canyon Drive, climb to Mulholland, and keep descending into Studio City where it meets Ventura Boulevard. From there it is the 101 west, six or seven miles, and off at Balboa Boulevard. Turn north, cross Victory, and the airport fence starts on your right. Suite 108A, 7900 Balboa Boulevard. About fifteen miles all in, and it avoids the freeway for the first half.
The alternative is Santa Monica Boulevard west to the 405 north through the Sepulveda Pass, then the 101 west to the same Balboa exit. On a Sunday morning that is genuinely quicker. On a weekday between four and seven it is the worst stretch of freeway in the region and you will regret it. Beverly Glen and Benedict Canyon both work as canyon substitutes if Coldwater is closed for filming, which happens more often than you would think.
Realistic timings: twenty-five minutes off-peak, thirty-five to fifty in the evening crush. Parking at our end is free and in our own lot, so there is no structure, no attendant and no ticket. That matters more than it sounds when you are trying to make a 7am lesson before a nine o'clock call. If you are coming for the first time, ring (818) 290-8249 as you turn onto Balboa and someone will meet you.
Why the drive over the hill is worth it
A field that is not closing
Santa Monica lost half its runway in 2017 and is scheduled to shut at the end of 2028. Van Nuys is a permanent, county-run general aviation airport with two parallel runways and no expiry date attached. Starting a certificate you will spend two or three years building on deserves an airport that will still be there when you finish it.
Class B discipline, learned early
The corridor between Van Nuys and Beverly Hills sits under the Los Angeles Class B shelf, with LAX traffic above you. Flying it teaches altitude precision, clear radio work and airspace awareness from the start. Pilots who train at quiet outlying fields have to acquire all of that afterwards, usually in the middle of a busy arrival.
The aircraft you would eventually want
There is a Cirrus SR22 Turbo on the ramp and a Piper Seminole twin beside it, and both sit inside packages rather than behind a rate card. You can start in a Cessna 162 and finish in glass and turbocharging without changing schools, which is unusual. It also means the aircraft you rent after certification is one you have already been checked out in.
Hours built around a working diary
Nine in the morning to nine at night, seven days a week, including weekends and holidays. A Beverly Hills schedule rarely produces two free hours on a Tuesday afternoon, but it often produces them at seven on a Thursday evening. Evening lessons are normal here, not an accommodation you have to negotiate.
What is on the ramp
Training starts in a Cessna 162 Skycatcher, a Diamond DA20 or a Piper Warrior, and your package covers whichever of them you fly along with the instructor sitting beside you. They are light, forgiving and, critically, there are enough of them that a maintenance day does not become your maintenance day. First solos happen in these aircraft. Anyone arriving from Beverly Hills expecting to begin in something with leather seats should know that the small trainers are where the flying is genuinely learned, and every good pilot ends up with an affectionate story about one of them.
After that the fleet opens up. The Piper Arrow II brings retractable gear and a constant-speed prop, the complex time a commercial certificate requires. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo and the twin-engine Piper Seminole sit at the top of the ramp, and the Seminole is where the $5,100 multi-engine rating is flown. Underpinning all of it is the Redbird MCX full-motion simulator at $189 for a sixty-minute session, where you can fly a coastal approach in weather that would be a poor idea in the aircraft, freeze it, and fly the last two miles again. It is the cheapest sixty minutes in the building and often the most useful.
What Beverly Hills looks like from 2,500 feet
Four things that resolve immediately as you clear the ridge southbound.
Los Angeles Country Club
The enormous green rectangle between Wilshire and Sunset, and easily the most obvious feature in Beverly Hills from the air. It reads as a hole punched in the city grid long before any individual street does.
Greystone Mansion
The grey slate roof and formal terraces above Loma Vista Drive, sitting on the hillside below Trousdale. On a clear afternoon the whole estate stands out against the brown of the hill behind it.
Franklin Canyon Reservoir
A small dark oval tucked into the hills directly under the Coldwater Canyon route you drove up. Most Beverly Hills students are surprised to find it there at all, having crossed above it for years.
The flatland street grid
South of Santa Monica Boulevard the palm-lined streets run in perfect diagonals, which from altitude look like combed lines. It is the single easiest way to distinguish Beverly Hills from everything around it.
Common questions
About fifteen miles, and roughly twenty-five minutes when the canyon is clear. Coldwater Canyon Drive to Ventura Boulevard, then the 101 west to the Balboa exit. In weekday evening traffic allow thirty-five to fifty minutes, and if the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass is your instinct, resist it after four in the afternoon.
It is nearer, but its runway was shortened to 3,500 feet in 2017 and the city has scheduled the airport to close at the end of 2028. A private certificate plus an instrument rating can span several years. Van Nuys has two full parallel runways, no closure date, and a far deeper fleet across the field.
Neither. Parking is free in our own lot at 7900 Balboa Boulevard, and Suite 108A is a short walk from the space. There is no terminal, no security screening and no ticket to validate. It is one of the small reasons a lesson only costs you two hours rather than an afternoon.
Standard is $10,900. Comprehensive is $15,900 and Premium is $22,500, and the difference is instructor availability, simulator hours and how much slack the package builds in for a volatile schedule. Financing runs through Stratus Financial, and we operate in-house payment plans as well. The consultation that works out which tier suits you is free.
You can fly in it on day one as a Luxury Cirrus For Two experience, from $399 for sixty minutes. Training in it as pilot in command comes later, once you have the fundamentals from a lighter aircraft, and it is written into the comprehensive and premium packages rather than sold separately. Nobody has ever regretted learning to land properly in a Skycatcher first.
It is, provided you plan for it rather than hope. The Premium Private Pilot program at $22,500 exists precisely for schedules that vanish for three weeks at a time, with heavy simulator use to hold currency between trips. Two lessons a week is the pace that works. One a month means paying to relearn things you already knew.
It is busy and it rewards precision. You are operating below a shelf of the Los Angeles Class B airspace with LAX arrivals overhead, so altitude and radio discipline matter. That is exactly why training here produces confident pilots. Students who learn in this environment find quieter airports elsewhere almost restful.
Mostly working professionals in their thirties through their fifties, plus people who have flown as passengers out of Van Nuys for years and finally want the controls. A few are costing out the Airline Pilot Program at $89,000. Most simply want to fly their family to Mammoth on a Friday.
Come over the canyon and have a look
The consultation is free, takes thirty minutes, and you will leave knowing what this actually costs and how long it will take you. Call (818) 290-8249, or book an intro flight and be over Beverly Hills looking down at your own street by the weekend.