Santa Monica Flight Training at Van Nuys Airport
Twenty-two miles north through the Sepulveda Pass, at a field with eight thousand feet of runway and no expiry date attached to it.
The runway question Santa Monica pilots keep asking
Santa Monica has an airport, and that is exactly why this page exists. Under the 2017 consent agreement between the city and the FAA, the runway at Santa Monica was shortened to three thousand five hundred feet, and the same agreement clears the way for the field to close after the end of 2028. Whatever your view of that, it is a poor foundation for a training decision that will take you two or three years and cost five figures. People come to us because they want somewhere to still be flying from in 2035.
Van Nuys is the answer most Westside pilots arrive at. It is twenty-two miles north over the Sepulveda Pass, it has an eight-thousand-foot main runway with a shorter parallel beside it, a control tower working all day, maintenance in the same complex and a fleet that goes from a two-seat trainer to a twin-engine Seminole. Nothing about it is provisional. You can start on a Cessna 162 and finish on a multi-engine rating without ever changing schools or losing your instructor.
The Santa Monica people who train here are a specific bunch. Software and media staff from the Colorado Avenue offices, clinicians from Saint John's, lawyers off Wilshire, people who already own a boat in the Marina and have decided the aeroplane is the logical next thing. What they have in common is that time, not money, is the scarce resource. So we run from nine in the morning until nine at night, every day, and lessons are booked one at a time rather than as a standing slot you lose when work moves.
If you have never flown a light aircraft, start with a discovery flight. It is $229 for sixty minutes with you handling the controls, and the route south over the Santa Monica Mountains puts the Getty, the bluffs and the pier under the wing within a few minutes of climbing out. The flight is loggable. Enrol within a day and the whole cost comes off your programme. Beyond that a private certificate is $10,900, and the first consultation is free.
Programmes Westside students take
Full published prices, so you can weigh them against a year of moorage fees without a calculator.
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 moreOver the Sepulveda Pass to 7900 Balboa Blvd
From anywhere in Santa Monica you take the 10 east to the 405 north, or Lincoln and Bundy if you would rather skip the freeway interchange. The 405 climbs through the Sepulveda Pass past UCLA and the Getty, crosses the ridge at the Skirball and drops onto the valley floor. Exit at Roscoe Boulevard, head west about two and a half miles to Balboa, and the airport is right there. Twenty-two miles. Thirty minutes when the pass is behaving.
It does not always behave, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Northbound through the pass between four and seven in the evening can turn thirty minutes into sixty. The clean window is mid-morning northbound and early afternoon southbound, which is why most Santa Monica students here fly at ten or eleven. Sepulveda Boulevard runs alongside the freeway through the pass and is the local bypass when the 405 stops entirely.
There is also a longer route worth knowing for the days the 405 is genuinely broken: Pacific Coast Highway north to Malibu Canyon Road, up over the Santa Monica Mountains to Las Virgenes, then the 101 south-east and off at Balboa. It is thirty-five miles and a beautiful drive. When you arrive, parking is free and on site, and our office is Suite 108A. The complex is shared with several unrelated aviation businesses, so use the suite number.
Why Westside pilots come over the hill
A field with a future
Van Nuys is not scheduled to shrink or close. That sounds like a low bar until you have watched a coastal airport lose fifteen hundred feet of runway. If you will spend two years becoming a pilot and then rent aircraft for a decade, the permanence of the airport matters.
You learn the Class B from above it
Santa Monica sits underneath the Los Angeles Class B shelves, which is intimidating to learn inside. Training from the valley side, you approach that airspace deliberately, on your own terms, with an instructor beside you. By the time you are certificated, transiting the basin and talking to controllers over the coast is routine rather than something you avoid.
Aircraft you will still want at 200 hours
The Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries a full glass panel and an airframe parachute. The Piper Arrow II has retractable gear. There is a Seminole twin. Learning somewhere with that range means the aeroplane you rent at two hundred hours is on the same ramp as the one you learned in.
Nothing performative about the price
Every figure on this page is a complete programme cost, and the in-person consultation before you commit is free. Financing runs through Stratus Financial or an in-house plan if you would rather spread it. We would rather talk you into the $10,900 programme that fits than the $22,500 one that does not.
What is on the ramp at Van Nuys
The trainers are the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior and the Diamond DA20, all of them included in the package you choose. The DA20 is the one to ask for on a clear afternoon: the canopy wraps around you, and heading south from Van Nuys the view down the Santa Monica Mountains to the water is uninterrupted from the moment you turn. All three are honest aeroplanes that will show you exactly what you are doing wrong, which is precisely what you want early on.
Then there is the rest of it. The Piper Arrow II has retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller for complex time. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo is a serious travelling aeroplane with a whole-airframe parachute and a full glass cockpit. The Piper Seminole is our twin, and the multi-engine rating flown in it is a $5,100 package. And the Redbird MCX is a genuine full-motion simulator at $189 for a sixty-minute session, where instrument approaches and engine failures get practised properly. Every one of these aircraft lives at Van Nuys Airport, on our ramp at 7900 Balboa Boulevard, not at Santa Monica.
What the coast looks like from the air
Turn south out of Van Nuys and the whole Westside is laid out beneath you before you level off.
The Getty Center
Pale travertine blocks and geometric gardens sitting on their own ridge above the Sepulveda Pass, with the tram line running up the hillside. It is the first thing anyone points at on a southbound departure, and it marks the gap in the mountains you have just crossed.
Santa Monica Pier
The Pacific Wheel and the little roller coaster stand out on the deck, and the whole pier throws a long shadow across the surf in the afternoon. Just north of it Palisades Park runs along the top of the bluff as a thin green stripe above the beach.
Santa Monica Airport
A single runway cut into the street grid between Ocean Park and Mar Vista, with the displaced thresholds now clearly visible at both ends. Seeing your local airport from a thousand feet above it explains its situation better than any article can.
The Palisades bluffs and Will Rogers
The line where the land drops away to Pacific Coast Highway and the beach, running north from Santa Monica toward Topanga. On a clear winter morning Catalina sits on the horizon behind it and the Channel Islands show up further up the coast.
Common questions
Under the 2017 consent agreement with the FAA, the runway was shortened to three thousand five hundred feet, and the agreement permits the city to close the airport after 31 December 2028. We will not speculate further. Van Nuys faces no equivalent timeline, which is why Westside students end up here.
Thirty minutes when the 405 is flowing, and up to sixty northbound in the evening peak. Mid-morning is reliable in both directions. Sepulveda Boulevard is the local bypass through the pass, and PCH to Malibu Canyon is the long way round when the freeway has stopped.
In our own car park at 7900 Balboa Blvd, free, with no meter and no time limit. Come to Suite 108A rather than looking for us along the ramp; the hangar complex is shared with unrelated aviation companies and the suite number is what reliably finds us.
Constantly. Van Nuys to the shoreline is about fifteen minutes of flying, and coastal work, over-water considerations and Class B transits are all part of the syllabus. Training in the valley does not mean flying only in the valley.
The standard programme is $10,900. A comprehensive version is $15,900 and the premium programme with the largest instruction block is $22,500. If you only intend to reach supervised solo, that is $5,500. Every number quoted is a whole-programme price.
For most people on this coast, the instrument rating at $11,700, because marine layer is what actually stops you flying. After that, multi-engine is $5,100 in the Seminole. If you want the Cirrus, we do the transition training here at Van Nuys and you rent it from the ramp you trained on.
More than people expect. The Redbird MCX is full-motion, and time in it counts toward an instrument rating within the limits the regulations set. At $189 for a sixty-minute session it is the cheapest seat we have, it never gets cancelled, and you can reset a botched approach and fly it again.
Almost always. It costs $229, you fly the aircraft yourself, and it answers the question no amount of research will: whether you actually enjoy being up there. The time is logged as instruction, and enrol within twenty-four hours and the full amount is credited against your programme.
Come over the hill and fly a discovery flight
Call (818) 290-8249 and book a mid-morning slot, when the pass is clear in both directions and the air over the Santa Monica Mountains is still smooth. We are at 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, open nine to nine every day, and the parking is free.