We Counted Every Flyable Hour At 15 US Training Airports

Van Nuys Airport met student training minima on 355 of the 364 days we observed between August 2025 and August 2026, and met basic VFR minimums on 363. That is higher than the 300 days most Los Angeles flight schools claim, including us before we measured it.

On weather alone it is among the best in the country. Van Nuys recorded 355 flyable days against 277 at Hillsboro, Oregon and 278 at Everett, Washington. It is level with Phoenix Deer Valley at 356 and Kissimmee, Florida at 355, which undercuts the common advice to move to the desert to train faster.

June Gloom is the marine layer that pushes inland overnight in late spring and early summer. It takes mornings, not days. At Van Nuys only 40% of 7am observations in June met training minima, but 93% at 11am and 97% from 1pm onward, so an afternoon lesson in June is close to a certainty.

Between May and September, book afternoons. At Van Nuys the 1pm to 4pm window met training minima 97 to 100% of the time in every summer month. The pattern reverses in November and December, when late afternoons drop to 87 to 90% and mid-morning becomes the more reliable slot.

Measurably, yes. Van Nuys recorded 355 flyable days against Santa Monica's 343, and the gap is much wider in the mornings. In August, 84% of 7am observations at Van Nuys met training minima against 48% at Santa Monica. Van Nuys sits inland behind the hills, which keeps the marine layer off it.

Most schools apply a ceiling of at least 3,000 feet and visibility of at least 5 statute miles for student solo and early dual instruction. That is deliberately more conservative than the legal VFR floor of 1,000 feet and 3 miles, which is what this study used as its threshold.

On ceiling and visibility alone, roughly 9 days in 364 at Van Nuys were unusable for a student across a whole year. The bigger risk is time of day rather than date, with early mornings in May and June being the weakest slots at 40 to 52%. Wind and turbulence cancel lessons too and are not counted in that figure.

The weather data does not support it if you are already in Los Angeles. Van Nuys at 355 days is statistically level with Phoenix Deer Valley at 356 and central Florida at 355. There may be cost or airspace reasons to train elsewhere, but you will not gain flyable days.

Routine hourly METAR observations from the Automated Surface Observing System at each airport, covering 1 August 2025 to 1 August 2026, retrieved from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet archive of NOAA observations. That is roughly 120,000 individual observations across fifteen stations.

Cancellations cost calendar rather than cash with us, since you are not charged for a lesson that does not fly. The real cost is the retraining tax: a student flying twice a week finishes near the 40-hour FAR 61.109 minimum, while one flying twice a month commonly needs 75 hours because each lesson starts by relearning the last.

We rebook it at no charge, and where the syllabus allows we move the session into the Redbird MCX full-motion simulator instead, which is never canceled for a ceiling. A standalone simulator session is $189, and 2 to 5 hours of simulator time are already included in every private pilot program.

Yes. The figures are computed from public NOAA observations and we are not claiming ownership of them. Reproduce the tables freely; a link back is appreciated but not required, and we will send the underlying CSVs and query URLs to anyone who asks.