The Flight School for Burbank Airport Residents
You have listened to Burbank Airport all your life without ever being inside the system that runs it, and that turns out to be a real head start. Our school is nine miles west, at Van Nuys Airport.
Five miles of sky between two control towers
People in Burbank read the airport without noticing they are doing it. The southbound departures that turn out over the Rancho, the arrivals coming down the far side of the Verdugos on an east wind, the change in sound when the runway in use swaps over. Sit in a garden off Kenneth Road long enough and you know the rhythm of a Class C airport by ear. It is the beginning of an aviation education, even though none of it was intentional.
What you cannot do is learn to fly there. Hollywood Burbank is built around airline schedules, and a student pilot practicing circuits is the last thing that runway needs. It is not our airport; we are at Van Nuys, five nautical miles due west and about nine by road, which is the nearest field designed for the job. The useful part is that the two airports effectively share a piece of sky. Their traffic patterns sit within a few minutes of each other, the same approach controllers handle both, and the transitions you will learn are the ones over your own street.
That proximity changes the first year of training. A student at a quiet outfield spends months in a bubble and then meets a busy Class C for the first time on a cross-country, usually badly. Out of Van Nuys you are talking to a tower on the first lesson and working traffic near a commercial field by the third. When you fly the Burbank transition yourself, you are looking down at streets you can name.
The people who ring us from Burbank are frequently on the field already in some form: ramp and line crews, dispatchers, maintenance staff, people at the rental counters who have watched aircraft leave for years. Others simply live under the approach and got curious. Both start the same way. A private pilot certificate is $10,900, a solo certificate is $5,500 if you want to reach first solo and decide from there, and a first flight for two is $299.
Where to start, and the actual prices
Five options that cover most of what people from Burbank ask for.
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 license 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 moreBurbank to 7900 Balboa Blvd, nine miles
Vanowen Street is the one to use. Pick it up near Buena Vista or Hollywood Way and run west through North Hollywood and Van Nuys. It crosses Coldwater, Woodman, Van Nuys Boulevard and Sepulveda without ever becoming complicated, and about nine miles later you reach Balboa Boulevard. Turn north there. The airport fence starts almost immediately on your right and 7900 Balboa Boulevard is a short way up, with Suite 108A facing our own lot. Twenty minutes on a normal weekday.
From the north end of town, around the Empire Center or Hollywood Way, go north to Roscoe Boulevard instead and take that west through Sun Valley. Roscoe brings you to Balboa above the airfield, so you turn south for the last half mile. Both routes are surface streets on purpose. The freeway version, the 5 to the 170 to the 101, adds two interchanges to a nine-mile trip and only ever wins at nine on a Sunday morning.
Parking is free, in our own lot, immediately outside the door, and nobody hands you a ticket on the way in. If your only experience of an airport is the terminal on Hollywood Way, the difference takes a moment to absorb: you park, walk twenty yards, and your instructor is already outside with the aircraft. The complex holds several unrelated aviation businesses, so come to Suite 108A rather than the street number alone. First visit, call (818) 290-8249 from Balboa.
What Van Nuys gives a Burbank student
Circuits are the whole point here
Learning to land means flying the same circuit twenty times in an afternoon, which is impossible to schedule at a field built around airline departures. At Van Nuys that is ordinary traffic. You can fly ten approaches in a lesson without apologizing to anyone, and repetition inside a single session is what actually builds a landing.
Navigation over ground you can name
Four minutes after take-off you are looking at Burbank from above: your street, your school, the reservoir, the canyon behind the house. Early navigation exercises work far better when you can check the chart against a place you know rather than anonymous ground. Students from this side of the Valley are quick at pilotage for that reason.
Night flying, without a fight
A private certificate requires night instruction, night take-offs and landings and a night cross-country. We instruct until nine in the evening every day of the week, and the tower runs all night, so those hours get booked normally instead of being squeezed into a December afternoon. Flying the Valley after dark is also the best hour of the day for it.
You learn the wind, not just the aircraft
Van Nuys has a personality: a westerly that builds through most afternoons, thermals rising off the pavement in summer, and Santa Ana conditions that pour down off the Verdugos and make everything interesting. Training in that produces pilots who read the conditions in front of them rather than pilots who only ever fly on calm mornings.
The aircraft on the ramp at Balboa
Training starts in the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior or the Diamond DA20, all three covered by your package rather than billed on the side. They are simple, current aircraft with modern radios and GPS, and the reason there are several of them rather than one is scheduling: a maintenance inspection should never be able to take your Tuesday evening slot away from you. For anyone working shifts around an airfield, that kind of reliability is worth more than any feature on the panel.
The rest of the fleet is what a license eventually opens up. The Piper Arrow II has retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo flies on a glass panel with air conditioning and an airframe parachute, and the Luxury Cirrus discovery flight from $399 is the easy way to try it. The twin-engine Piper Seminole is where the $5,100 multi-engine rating happens. The Redbird MCX full-motion simulator sits indoors at Suite 108A, is $189 for a one-hour session, is built into the private packages, and takes a serious share of the instrument work at a fraction of the cost of an aircraft.
Burbank from the circuit
Four things that fix your position over your own town.
The Stough Canyon fire roads
Pale switchback tracks cut into the green face above the top of Sunset Canyon Drive, with the amphitheater bowl tucked in below them. They mark the exact line where the streets give up and the Verdugos start.
The Chandler bikeway
A straight green ribbon running east to west through the middle of the city on an old rail alignment, one of the few lines in Burbank that ignores the street grid. It doubles as a heading reference.
The Whitnall corridor
A wide diagonal of transmission towers and open ground slicing across an otherwise square town toward the Valley floor. Diagonals are rare from the air here, which makes this one visible from a long way out.
The Equestrian Center paddocks
Sand arenas, white rails and horse trailers packed together where Burbank meets the north edge of Griffith Park. From two thousand feet it is the only ground nearby that looks agricultural.
Common questions
About twenty minutes for nine miles, west on Vanowen Street and then north on Balboa. From the north end of town, Roscoe Boulevard west works equally well. No freeway is involved in either route, which is why the timing barely changes between three in the afternoon and seven in the evening. Call (818) 290-8249 if you are running late and we will hold the slot.
The runway is built for airline and business jet operations, and a training aircraft doing repeated circuits does not fit that flow. Costs on the field reflect the jet traffic. Van Nuys is five nautical miles west, exists for exactly this kind of flying, and puts you in Burbank's airspace often enough that you learn it properly anyway.
Regularly. Van Nuys to Burbank is a four-minute leg, and the practice areas and navigation exercises run out across the Valley and along the Verdugos. Most students pick out their own roof within the first few lessons. Tell your instructor where you live and it will find its way into a lesson.
$10,900 for the standard course or $15,900 for the comprehensive version, which builds in more instruction and aircraft time. If you would rather commit in stages, the solo certificate is $5,500 and rolls into the full course afterwards. Stratus Financial handles financing and we run payment plans in house. Every figure is fixed.
Forty is the legal minimum and almost nobody finishes there. Sixty to seventy is realistic, and the number is driven by how often you fly rather than by talent. Two lessons a week is the sweet spot: six to nine months to a checkride. One lesson a month can double the total through re-learning.
Yes, and a good share of our Burbank students do. We instruct from nine in the morning until nine at night, every day of the week, so an early lesson before a day shift and a late one after a swing shift are both normal bookings. Block scheduling holds your slots weeks ahead, which matters when a roster comes out late.
Almost certainly. You can begin instruction at any age, solo at sixteen and hold a private certificate at seventeen, so starting at fourteen or fifteen is sensible rather than early. There is a teen training package at $4,200. Plenty of Burbank High and Burroughs students have logged hours before a driving license.
It is free and takes about sixty minutes. You meet an instructor, walk out to the aircraft, see the simulator and go through cost, timelines and medical requirements with nothing to sign. If you would rather start in the air, a discovery flight for two is $299, and the whole amount comes off tuition if you enroll within a day.
Nine miles west of the runway you know
Come and stand on the other side of the fence, at a field where light aircraft are the main event rather than an inconvenience. Call (818) 290-8249 for a free consultation, or take the $299 flight for two and see Burbank from the seat that matters.
Get the full training plan and price sheet
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.
- Every package price, itemised
- Financing from $2,500 down
- A timeline based on your schedule