North Hollywood Flight School at Van Nuys Airport
Eight miles and one straight boulevard separate the NoHo Arts District from a control tower, two parallel runways and an aircraft with your name on the booking.
Close enough that the excuse stops working
Most people who mean to learn to fly never start, and the reason is almost always logistics rather than money or nerve. North Hollywood removes the logistics. Van Nuys Airport is eight miles from Lankershim and Magnolia, straight out Victory Boulevard, twenty minutes on an ordinary evening. That is shorter than many people's commute to work. A lesson fits into the gap between a shift and dinner, which is exactly the gap in which flight training either happens or quietly does not.
The neighbourhood is full of people who work odd hours for a living. Editors and colourists in the post houses along Lankershim, grips and set builders, the crowd who keep two dozen small theatres running in the Arts District, nurses and shift workers all over Valley Village. None of them have a clean nine-to-five to plan around, which is usually fatal to training at a school that closes at five. We fly until nine at night, seven days a week.
There is a transit angle too, which is unusual for an airport. The Metro G Line busway starts at the North Hollywood station and runs west along the old rail alignment through Van Nuys, with a stop at Woodley and another at Balboa. It puts you within a couple of miles of the flight line in about twenty-five minutes without a car. Students without a licence to drive, and teenagers being brought by a parent only half the time, use it more than you would expect.
What you get at the end of the eight miles is not a hobby field. Van Nuys has two parallel runways, a control tower, jets on the ramp, and enough traffic that you learn to talk on the radio properly in your first month rather than your first year. Your first flight is a real lesson: an FAA-certified instructor, a logbook entry in your name, and time that counts toward the forty hours the certificate requires. Enrol within a day of that flight and its full cost comes off your tuition.
What you can train for here
Five routes in, from an afternoon to a full career, with the prices as published.
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 moreThe eight miles from NoHo to Balboa Boulevard
Victory Boulevard is the answer and it is almost embarrassingly simple. Pick it up at Lankershim, go west through Valley Glen and Van Nuys, cross Sepulveda, and turn north on Balboa. Two miles up, the airport fence starts on your right and Suite 108A is on the 7900 block. Eight and a half miles, twenty minutes off-peak, twenty-eight or so at half past five when the Sepulveda and Van Nuys Boulevard signals stack up. Burbank Boulevard is the same trip one street north if Victory is closed for filming.
The freeway is rarely worth it for this. The 170 south to the 101 west and off at Balboa looks faster on a map and is not, because you spend the difference in the Hollywood Freeway merge. If you want the fastest reliable version, use surface streets and leave ten minutes earlier. From Toluca Lake or the eastern edge of North Hollywood, Magnolia to Woodman to Victory saves a signal or two and keeps you out of the worst of it.
You can also arrive without a car. The G Line busway leaves North Hollywood station every few minutes in its own lane; get off at Woodley or Balboa and it is a short ride north to the 7900 block. Once you are here, parking is free in our own lot and the door of Suite 108A is a few steps from it. No terminal, no security queue, no barrier. Arrive fifteen minutes early and wear closed-toe shoes.
Why the airport eight miles away is the right one
You will be on the radio in week one
Van Nuys is a towered field with real traffic, so clearances, readbacks and sequencing are part of your training from the beginning rather than something bolted on later. That is why our students are relaxed flying into Santa Barbara or Long Beach. Pilots taught at quiet strips often spend their first year avoiding busy airports entirely.
Aircraft that are actually available
Two parallel runways mean light trainers are not stuck holding for departing jets, and a fleet of five types means the aeroplane you booked is the aeroplane you fly. Cancelled and bumped lessons are the main reason flight training overruns its budget, and most of that problem is fixed by a field with capacity.
Evenings and weekends, properly staffed
We fly until nine at night and we are open on Sundays. For crew members and shift workers that is not a nicety, it is the only version of flight training that works at all. Night flying is a required part of the private certificate anyway, and living eight miles away makes those lessons easy rather than an expedition.
Everything after the licence is here too
Instrument rating at $11,700, multi-engine at $5,100 in the Seminole, the full airline track at $89,000. You are not going to outgrow the school in a year and have to start again somewhere else with new instructors, new aircraft types and a new checkout. The same people teach you from the first hour to the last.
The aeroplanes on the ramp
You will start in one of three: the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior or the Diamond DA20. Whichever one you fly, the aircraft and the instructor are covered by the package you choose. All three are light, honest trainers with modern radios and GPS, and all three were chosen because they make a student's mistakes small. The DA20 sits under a bubble canopy with the best view of anything we operate, which is why it disappears from the schedule first on clear winter afternoons when the whole basin is sharp.
The step up is real rather than decorative. The Piper Arrow II brings retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller for complex training. The Piper Seminole is the twin, and the multi-engine rating flown in it is a $5,100 package. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo is turbocharged and air-conditioned with a full glass panel and a parachute built into the airframe. Indoors sits a Redbird MCX full-motion simulator, $189 for a sixty-minute session, which is where instrument approaches stop being expensive and where a windy evening still gets you somewhere. All of it is at Van Nuys Airport, Suite 108A, not at Hollywood Burbank.
North Hollywood from 2,500 feet
Four things you will find in the window on an easterly departure without help.
The transit interchange at Lankershim and Chandler
Two big park-and-ride decks, the subway portal and the busway peeling away west along the old rail line. It is the most legible piece of infrastructure in the east Valley from above.
North Hollywood Park and the Earhart library
A green rectangle between Magnolia and Chandler with ball fields, a pool and the low library building tucked in one corner. It is named after Amelia Earhart, which nobody notices from the ground either.
The Tujunga Wash
A hard concrete line running south through Valley Village toward the river, dead straight where every street around it bends. In summer it is dry and bright and easier to follow than the boulevards.
The 170 heading for the Cahuenga Pass
The Hollywood Freeway runs arrow-straight south from Sherman Way then vanishes into the gap in the hills. Follow it with your eye and the whole eastern Valley falls into place.
Common questions
Twenty minutes for eight and a half miles on Victory Boulevard, most of the day. Add eight or so between five and seven in the evening. It is one of the shortest drives to a towered training airport anyone in Los Angeles has, and the main reason people from NoHo finish what they start.
Yes, which is rare for an airport. The G Line busway begins at North Hollywood station and runs west to stops at Woodley and Balboa in about twenty-five minutes. From either stop it is a short ride or a twenty-five minute walk north on Balboa to the 7900 block. Several of our students have never driven here.
Hollywood Burbank is an airline field with crossing runways and jet arrivals every few minutes, and a training aircraft there spends a lot of paid time holding. Van Nuys is a general aviation airport with two parallel runways and the traffic mix a student needs. The four extra miles buy you a great deal more flying out of every lesson. We are based at Van Nuys, never at Burbank.
In our own lot on Balboa Boulevard, at no charge, a few steps from the door of Suite 108A. There is no terminal building to walk through and no barrier to deal with. Give yourself fifteen minutes before the slot for the pre-flight briefing, and bring photo identification for your first visit.
It is built for it. We fly from nine in the morning until nine at night every day of the week, and you book specific slots rather than accepting a fixed timetable. Cancel with a day's notice and there is no penalty. Two lessons a week is what keeps the total hours down, whichever days they land on.
The sport pilot licence is $8,400, needs fewer hours, requires no FAA medical certificate, and limits you to light aircraft, daylight, visual conditions and one passenger. The private certificate is $10,900 and removes all of that. Most people choose the private, and a sport licence converts upward if you start there.
A discovery flight is $229 for one person for sixty minutes, $299 for two, and there are ninety-minute and two-hour versions of both. You fly the aircraft yourself with an instructor beside you. The time is logged and counts toward your certificate, and if you enrol within twenty-four hours the entire cost comes off the course price.
It is $89,000 from zero hours to airline-ready, and it wants serious commitment rather than spare evenings. Most people who finish do it full-time, then instruct to build hours. Come in for the free consultation and we will lay out the timeline and the financing honestly, including the parts that suit nobody with a mortgage.
Eight miles. Book a discovery flight and see
Drive Victory Boulevard west one evening this week and fly an aircraft over your own neighbourhood with an instructor beside you. Call (818) 290-8249 and we will find a slot around whatever North Hollywood has you doing this month.