Flight training near you, flown out of Van Nuys

We operate from one location: 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, at Van Nuys Airport. Students drive in from 35 communities across Los Angeles and Ventura County, and most are between 10 and 40 minutes away. Every aircraft, instructor and simulator is at that one field, which is why scheduling holds together.

Up to about 45 minutes is normal, because a single lesson is a three-hour commitment once you count the preflight briefing, the flight and the debrief. Aircraft availability and instructor turnover will affect your total cost far more than 15 minutes of driving. A school with two aircraft and a 20-minute drive will finish you later and more expensively than one with a full fleet 40 minutes out.

No. The Standard private pilot program is $10,900, Comprehensive is $15,900 and Premium is $22,500 for everyone, and the package rate for enrolled students is $179 an hour, wet. There is no travel charge and no area pricing.

A discovery flight is $229 for 60 minutes. You fly the aircraft from the left seat with an instructor beside you, and the hour is logged as dual instruction that counts toward your certificate. Enroll within 24 hours and the whole $229 comes off your program price.

Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) in the San Fernando Valley. It is a Class D field with two parallel runways sitting under the LAX Class B shelf, and it handles more general aviation traffic than almost any airport in the world. Learning there means you are working with a control tower from your first lesson.

It is one of the best in the country for it. You get controlled-field radio work, busy traffic patterns and real airspace from lesson one, so you are not intimidated flying into anywhere else afterwards. The trade-off is that you will occasionally hold short longer than at a quiet field, which is why we schedule around the peaks and put procedures work in the Redbird simulator.

FAR 61.109 sets a 40-hour minimum and the national average is 60 to 75 hours. Flying twice a week, most people finish in four to six months. Flying twice a month, expect a year or more, because every lesson starts with re-learning the last one.

Yes. We have students who drive in regularly from Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Moorpark, Westlake Village and Camarillo, typically 30 to 45 minutes on the 101 or the 118. Several of them book longer blocks less often rather than short lessons twice a week, which works well when the drive is longer.

Yes, and you will. Roughly 40 minutes of a 60-minute discovery flight are spent with your hands on the controls, including the takeoff. The instructor is the legal pilot in command throughout and handles the radio while you fly.

Not to start. You need a medical certificate before your first solo, which typically happens somewhere between 15 and 25 hours. Sport Pilot at $8,400 does not require one at all, which is one reason people choose it.

There is no minimum age to begin lessons. You must be 16 to fly solo and 17 to be issued a private pilot certificate. Our teen aviation course for ages 10 to 15 is $4,200 and is built for students who are too young to solo but serious about flying.

We own and maintain every aircraft on our ramp, including the Cessna, Piper and Diamond single-engine trainers, the Cirrus SR22 Turbo and the Piper Seminole twin. That is the reason a lesson booked for Tuesday happens on Tuesday, and it is worth asking any school you are considering.