SAFETY FIRST
★★★★★
Very safety and detail oriented. Pre-flight briefing explained everything there was. To my knowledge, this flight school is exceptional in their ability.
Van Nuys Airport · KVNY
West Hollywood Pilot Training At Van Nuys Airport
West Hollywood covers less than two square miles and contains no runway, so the nearest place to actually learn to fly sits one canyon road north of Sunset.
5.0★100+ reviews on Google
2,000+discovery flights flown safely
15+ yearsbehind every FAA-certified instructor
19 milesfrom Sunset Blvd to the ramp
Local
Learning To Fly From The Densest City In The County
West Hollywood is one point nine square miles and the most densely populated city in Los Angeles County. There is no open ground in it, no airfield, and no realistic place to put one. What most residents have instead of a garage is a permit sticker and a running argument about street sweeping day. That quietly shapes which expensive interests are even possible here. Flying is one of the few that needs no storage, no trailer and no side yard, because the aircraft lives on a ramp at Van Nuys and you turn up with a bag. West Hollywood is where our students drive from; the school itself is at Van Nuys Airport, Suite 108A at 7900 Balboa Boulevard.
The people who call us from this city rarely work a fixed week. Music managers and agents with offices off the Strip, showroom staff around the Pacific Design Center and Robertson, hospitality crews on Santa Monica Boulevard, nurses from Cedars-Sinai on the southern edge, and a steady number from the Russian-speaking community near Plummer Park. What they share is a diary that moves without warning. We fly nine in the morning until nine at night, every day, so an eight o'clock evening lesson is an ordinary slot.
The drive is the part we will not dress up. It is roughly nineteen miles and thirty to forty minutes if you choose your hour, and considerably worse at six on a Friday while Sunset is solid both ways. Book mornings where you can. What compensates is the far end: parking outside Suite 108A is free, ungated and takes about ninety seconds, which is not a sentence anyone gets to write about parking in West Hollywood.
On the numbers, the Standard Private Pilot program is $10,900 and most people finish in four to six months flying twice a week. Forty hours is the legal minimum and sixty to seventy is what it usually takes. If you only want to find out whether you enjoy it, a Discovery Flight For One is $229 for sixty minutes, the time is logged in your name, and the whole cost comes off your training if you enroll within twenty-four hours.
Courses & Pricing
Every Course We Teach
★★★★★
5.0 Rating
100+ Google Reviews
Course prices are packages, not hourly rates - the aircraft, your instructor, ground school and simulator time are all in the figure. Van Nuys Airport, KVNY. Financing Available Through Stratus & In-House Plans.
Start Here
Discovery Flight
The First Hour At The Controls. Credited Toward Your Training If You Enroll Within 24 Hours Of Landing.
From$229
Book A Discovery Flight
01
Discovery Flight
The first hour at the controls; credits toward training if you enroll within 24 hours of landing.
From$229
02
Teen Flight Training Ages 10–15
Starting before it is legal to solo.
$4,200
03
Multi-Engine Rating
For existing pilots adding a twin.
$5,100
04
Solo Certificate
Enough training to take an aircraft around the pattern alone.
$5,500
05
Sport Pilot
A real certificate, fewer hours, narrower privileges.
$8,400
06
Private Pilot Most Enrolled
The one most people mean by “learn to fly.”
$10,900
07
Instrument Rating
Turns a fair-weather pilot into a useful one.
$11,700
08
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Private with flight time, ground instruction and materials bundled.
$15,900
09
Premium Private Pilot
The most flight time before your checkride - 80 logged hours.
$22,500
10
Airline Pilot Program
Zero experience to airline-hireable qualifications.
$89,000
All Prices In USD. 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, Van Nuys, CA 91406 · Open 9 AM–9 PM, Seven Days. Free In-Person Tour Of The School
Book It Or Gift It
Fly It Yourself, Or Give The Flight To Someone Else
Every discovery flight below can be booked for yourself in the next few minutes, or bought as a gift certificate that is emailed within minutes and never expires. Same flight, same price, either way.
Most Given
Two Seats
The Nice One
Twin Engine
Discovery Flight For One
One person, one instructor, and no audience. Hands on the controls from the left seat, briefed before you go and debriefed after you land.
Hands-On Stick TimePre-Flight BriefingLoggable Flight Time
Flight Length
$229Book It Or Gift It
Same Price Either Way
Discovery Flight For Two
The same flight with a passenger in the back seat, briefed and on the intercom. Couples book it; so do parents who would rather watch than hear about it.
One Passenger SeatPiper Warrior Or ArcherHeadsets For Both
Flight Length
$299Book It Or Gift It
Same Price Either Way
Luxury Discovery Flight
The nicest airplane we put a first-time flyer in. Glass cockpit, air conditioning, leather seats, and a parachute built into the airframe rather than strapped to the person.
Turbocharged Cirrus SR22Air ConditioningWhole-Airframe Parachute
Flight Length
Bring A PassengerInstructor + 2 is our maximum+$100
$499Book It Or Gift It
Same Price Either Way
Multi-Engine Seminole
Two engines, and the airplane instrument-rated pilots move into when they start thinking about a career. Flown from the left seat with a multi-engine instructor.
Piper Seminole TwinMulti-Engine DepartureCareer-Track Instructor
Flight Length
$499Book It Or Gift It
Same Price Either Way
Gift It issues a real gift certificate, emailed within minutes, which never expires and credits in full toward training. Flights are limited to 180 lb per person, 370 lb combined. Questions: (818) 290-8249, 9 AM–9 PM, seven days.
Getting Here
Laurel Canyon North, Then Straight Up Balboa
The default run is Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Pick it up at Sunset, climb past the old houses stacked on the hillside, cross Mulholland at the top and drop into Studio City. Join the 101 westbound at the Laurel Canyon interchange, stay on it about eight miles, and take the Balboa Boulevard exit in Encino. Turn north on Balboa and hold that heading through Ventura, Burbank, Victory, Vanowen and Sherman Way. The airport fence appears on your right and we are at 7900 Balboa Boulevard, Suite 108A.
The alternative is Fairfax or La Brea up to Hollywood and the 101 through the Cahuenga Pass, which works before nine in the morning and is a poor decision after four. Westside residents sometimes prefer Santa Monica Boulevard out to the 405 and north over the Sepulveda Pass, exiting at Roscoe and running east to Balboa. All three land within a few minutes of each other on a good day. On a bad day, Laurel Canyon loses the least.
Parking is free and sits directly outside the suite in our own lot. No meter, no permit, no structure, no valet, nobody deciding whether your car qualifies. That matters more than it sounds: if the drive is thirty-five minutes and parking is instant, a one-hour lesson costs about two and a half hours door to door. First time here, call (818) 290-8249 from Balboa Boulevard and someone will bring you in through the right gate.
Why Van Nuys
Why The Canyon Drive Is Worth Doing
1
The Nearest Field That Actually Teaches
There is no flight training in West Hollywood and nothing worth the trip in the streets around it. Van Nuys is the closest airport with two parallel runways, a full-time tower, its own maintenance and a fleet deep enough that one aircraft going into inspection does not cancel your fortnight. Everything nearer is shorter, busier with jets, or both.
2
Congested Airspace Is The Lesson
You will be talking to a controller on your first flight and every flight after it. Van Nuys sits under the Los Angeles Class B shelf with Burbank a few miles east, so clearances, transitions and sequencing become normal early. Pilots who learn somewhere quiet spend their first year sounding nervous on the radio.
3
Nine At Night Is A Real Booking
Our last lessons go out in the evening and we are open on Sundays. For people working promotion cycles, shoot days, restaurant service or hospital rotations, that is the difference between two flights a week and one a month. Frequency drives what a certificate finally costs, far more than anything else does.
4
The Simulator Covers The Weeks Away
The Redbird MCX is a full-motion trainer at $189 for a sixty-minute session, and it ignores weather, daylight and a busy ramp. Disappear on tour or location for a month and one session in it on the way back restores your instrument scan far more cheaply than relearning in the aircraft. It counts toward the instrument rating too.
The Fleet
Seven Aircraft, One Ramp, No Waiting List
Primary training happens in the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior and the Diamond DA20, each of them covered by your package along with the instructor. The DA20 is the one West Hollywood students usually fall for, because the canopy is a bubble and the view sideways and down is uninterrupted, which matters when the ground under you is the city you live in. All three are honest aircraft that tell you plainly what your hands are doing, and there are enough of them that a scheduled maintenance day does not become your problem.
Above that sits the Piper Arrow II with retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller, then the Cirrus SR22 Turbo and the twin-engine Piper Seminole, which is the aircraft behind the $5,100 Multi-Engine Rating. The Cirrus is the aircraft people picture when they imagine owning one: pressurised comfort, a large glass panel and an airframe parachute. Then there is the Redbird MCX full-motion simulator, $189 for a sixty-minute session, where you can fly the same approach into weather ten times in a session, fail an engine deliberately, and reset without touching a drop of fuel.
From The Air
West Hollywood From 2,500 Feet
Four things you can pick out of the flat grid on the way back over the hills.
🟦
The Pacific Design Center
Blue, green and red glass in three slabs, sitting in a low neighborhood containing nothing else remotely that size. It is the fastest visual fix on West Hollywood from the air.
🏥
The Cedars-Sinai Campus
Pale block towers and a rooftop helipad on the southern edge, where West Hollywood stops and Beverly Grove begins. Watch on a clear evening and a medical helicopter will come in low from the east.
🛤️
The Santa Monica Boulevard Median
A dead-straight green strip running east to west, laid on the old Pacific Electric right of way that once carried streetcars to the sea. From above it reads as a seam stitched through the grid.
🌴
The Bend In The Sunset Strip
Sunset curves along the base of the hills, and the billboards are legible from a surprising height. North of that line the streets stop dead and the Hollywood Hills begin.
FAQ
Common Questions
Thirty to forty minutes over Laurel Canyon to the 101 and then north on Balboa, about nineteen miles. Mornings and mid-evenings are fine. Friday afternoons are genuinely bad and we will say so rather than book you into one.
Nothing that would serve you. The Westside options are shorter fields with less availability, and heading south adds more traffic than it saves in miles. Van Nuys gives you two parallel runways, a full-time tower, seven aircraft types and a simulator on one ramp.
No. Our lot is free, open and directly outside Suite 108A at 7900 Balboa Boulevard. No meter, no permit zone, no structure, nobody to tip. Given that most of our West Hollywood students spend their week negotiating parking, several call this the restful part of the trip.
The Standard program is $10,900, Comprehensive is $15,900 and Premium is $22,500. The difference is instructor availability, simulator hours and built-in contingency, not the certificate you end up holding. Stratus Financial handles lending and we run payment plans in house. The consultation is free.
Yes, and it is one of the most common bookings we take from this part of town. Discovery Flight For Two starts at $299 for sixty minutes and the Luxury Cirrus For Two is $499. The recipient flies the aircraft rather than riding along, and the logged hour counts if they carry on.
It is, provided you use evening and Sunday slots rather than defending a fixed Saturday morning. The students who stall fly once a month, and each lesson gets spent recovering skill instead of adding it. If a project swallows six weeks, a $189 session in the Redbird keeps you current.
You will see it constantly, though most training happens over the Valley and the hills to the north, where there is room to practice maneuveres. Transits across the basin sit under the Class B shelf and demand real altitude discipline. Almost every student finds their own block within a few flights.
You come to Suite 108A, meet an instructor, look at the aircraft on the ramp and ask whatever you want about cost, timeline and medicals. It takes thirty minutes and costs nothing. If an aircraft is free we can usually fly you the same day. Call (818) 290-8249.
Talk To Us
One Canyon Road, Then The Left Seat
Come up Laurel Canyon on a morning when Sunset is still quiet, park free outside the door and see the aircraft before you commit to anything. Call (818) 290-8249 to book a free consultation or a discovery flight from $229.
Discovery Flight For One
$229
60 minutes, hands on the controls, fully loggable
Book A Discovery Flight
Or Call (818) 290-8249
No Cost, No Obligation
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
Loved On Google
Over 100 Reviews. 5.0 Stars.
Every review below is real and shown verbatim, in the reviewer’s own words — written by the people who learned to fly here, not by us.
SAFETY FIRST
DISCOVERY FLIGHT
★★★★★
I recently had the chance to take my first-ever discovery flight, and it was nothing short of amazing! From the moment I stepped into the cockpit, the...
SUNSET CIRRUS
★★★★★
It was a great flight! I did a sunset flight and Alex let us fly an awesome. Website was easy to book, and the plane itself was really fun to fly...
FLYING LESSON
★★★★★
We had a great flying lesson with Ralph and came away with a much better understanding of both the aircraft and the principles of flight. Ralph is a...
KIDS LUXURY FLIGHT
★★★★★
I got 2 luxury discovery flights for my kids. I wanted them to have the experience of flying. Our instructor Alex was amazing he made sure they feel...
HONEYMOON SURPRISE
★★★★★
Last minute booking to surprise my wife on our honeymoon. She had no experience with flying and was scared of flying, but Alex was very easygoing and knew...
FULL-MOTION SIM
★★★★★
Amazing flight school in van nuys airport. I have been a student here for the past few months and i could not be happier. I started doing a lot of...
DISCOVERY FOR TWO
★★★★★
I booked a Discovery Flight for Two for my girlfriend's birthday and it was the perfect gift for her. She couldn't have been more excited to get to...
SIMULATORS
★★★★★
Very professional and great airplanes. I love the flight simulators. The pricing is very fair compared to any other flight school
TEEN FIRST LESSON
★★★★★
We gifted our teenage son his first flying lesson. He was so excited! Alex greeted us and gave a reassuring brief that made us all feel comfortable and at...
FIRST-TIME FLYER
★★★★★
Flying is my husband's hobby and I was incredibly anxious and apprehensive about the discovery flight. However, I felt completely safe and at ease once we...
SAFETY FIRST
★★★★★
Very safety and detail oriented. Pre-flight briefing explained everything there was. To my knowledge, this flight school is exceptional in their ability.
DISCOVERY FLIGHT
★★★★★
I recently had the chance to take my first-ever discovery flight, and it was nothing short of amazing! From the moment I stepped into the cockpit, the...
SUNSET CIRRUS
★★★★★
It was a great flight! I did a sunset flight and Alex let us fly an awesome. Website was easy to book, and the plane itself was really fun to fly...
FLYING LESSON
★★★★★
We had a great flying lesson with Ralph and came away with a much better understanding of both the aircraft and the principles of flight. Ralph is a...
KIDS LUXURY FLIGHT
★★★★★
I got 2 luxury discovery flights for my kids. I wanted them to have the experience of flying. Our instructor Alex was amazing he made sure they feel...
HONEYMOON SURPRISE
★★★★★
Last minute booking to surprise my wife on our honeymoon. She had no experience with flying and was scared of flying, but Alex was very easygoing and knew...
FULL-MOTION SIM
★★★★★
Amazing flight school in van nuys airport. I have been a student here for the past few months and i could not be happier. I started doing a lot of...
DISCOVERY FOR TWO
★★★★★
I booked a Discovery Flight for Two for my girlfriend's birthday and it was the perfect gift for her. She couldn't have been more excited to get to...
SIMULATORS
★★★★★
Very professional and great airplanes. I love the flight simulators. The pricing is very fair compared to any other flight school
TEEN FIRST LESSON
★★★★★
We gifted our teenage son his first flying lesson. He was so excited! Alex greeted us and gave a reassuring brief that made us all feel comfortable and at...
FIRST-TIME FLYER
★★★★★
Flying is my husband's hobby and I was incredibly anxious and apprehensive about the discovery flight. However, I felt completely safe and at ease once we...
See Discovery Flight Details — $229
Reviews shown verbatim, exactly as each reviewer published them.
Aviation News
Latest From The Field
Notes from the flight line at Van Nuys — weather, regulation changes, checkride questions and the cost of training, written up as they come.
Van Nuys Airport · KVNY
(818) 290-8249
7900 Balboa Blvd. Suite 108A
Van Nuys, CA 91406 Get directions →
Open the full contact page
Open 7 days · 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Los Angeles Flight School7900 Balboa Blvd. Suite 108A
Van Nuys, CA 91406 Get directions →
★★★★★
5.0 · 100+ Google reviews