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
Private Pilot Training Near Agoura Hills, At Van Nuys
Agoura Hills sits almost exactly between two airports, and the twenty-four miles east buy a fleet, a tower and a syllabus you will not outgrow halfway through.
5.0★100+ reviews on Google
$10,900standard private pilot course
2,000+discovery flights flown safely
15+ yrsbehind every instructor
Local
Two Airports, Roughly Equidistant, And One Honest Answer
From Reyes Adobe Road you can reach Camarillo going west or Van Nuys going east in a similar amount of time, so the choice deserves an actual reason rather than a map. Ours is depth. Van Nuys is twenty-four miles east on the 101, about twenty-six to twenty-eight minutes, and it holds a light sport trainer, a complex single, a glass-panel Cirrus, a twin and a full-motion simulator on the same apron. Nothing you decide to do next requires finding a new school for it. To be plain about it, we are based at Van Nuys Airport, Suite 108A at 7900 Balboa Boulevard, not at Camarillo. Agoura Hills is where our students drive from.
The weather argues the same way. Agoura sits at the point where the marine air pushing up through the Conejo Grade meets the air spilling in over the Malibu Canyon gap, which is why May and June mornings can be gray at home, grayer still on the Oxnard plain and perfectly clear thirty miles inland. Lessons at an inland field simply cancel less often. In October the pattern reverses and the Santa Anas deliver the sharpest, clearest flying days of the year, straight over your own hills.
The students who come from this stretch of the 101 are recognizable. Families in the Las Virgenes schools whose weekends already involve trailheads at Chesebro and Palo Comado. People who ride Kanan down to the coast for the sake of it. Plenty who commute the freeway daily and have looked at the aircraft turning overhead somewhere around Liberty Canyon for years without ever asking what it would take. It takes a medical certificate, a syllabus and about a year of Saturdays.
Being twenty-four miles out changes how you train rather than whether you can. The people who finish are the ones who make each visit worth the drive: two hours booked instead of one, a lesson followed by a ground briefing, a simulator session added when the cloud sits low. That is a scheduling habit, not a talent, and we build the calendar around it from the first week rather than leaving you to discover it in month four.
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
Agoura Hills To 7900 Balboa Blvd, Twenty-Four Miles
Join the 101 eastbound at Reyes Adobe, Kanan or Chesebro Road. The freeway climbs past Liberty Canyon and Lost Hills, drops through the gap at Valley Circle and runs flat along the southern edge of the Valley from Woodland Hills to Encino. Leave at Balboa Boulevard, turn north, and stay on it across Ventura, Burbank and Victory until the airport fence appears on your left. Number 7900 is the block after that, with Suite 108A facing our own lot.
Direction matters here more than the hour does. Eastbound in the morning you are traveling with the commute and the section from Calabasas to Reseda thickens noticeably after half past seven. Westbound in the evening is the reverse. Mid-morning and after seven at night are therefore the two windows that work in both directions, and they also happen to be when the air over the practice areas is smoothest, so the easy drive and the good lesson are the same booking.
If the freeway shuts, and out here it occasionally does, Agoura Road to Canwood and Thousand Oaks Boulevard will get you as far as Calabasas on the surface before you have to rejoin. It is slow but it is never stationary. At our end, parking is free in our own open lot outside the door, with no gate and no ticket machine. On a first visit, call (818) 290-8249 when you pass Topanga and someone will be looking out for you.
Why Van Nuys
Why Agoura Hills Students Drive East
1
Camarillo, Compared Honestly
Camarillo is a fine airport and closer to the Ventura County line, but it sits on the Oxnard plain where the marine layer lingers longest, and it cannot offer a twin, a complex single and a full-motion simulator on one ramp. If you only want a sport license the difference is small. If you might want an instrument rating later, it is not. We do not teach at Camarillo; every lesson we fly starts and ends at Van Nuys.
2
The Cross-Countries Write Themselves
Your certificate requires solo navigation flights, including one of at least a hundred and fifty nautical miles. From Van Nuys the natural legs run to Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Bakersfield or Palmdale, all with towers, fuel and real weather to plan around. It is a genuinely useful education rather than three laps of an empty valley.
3
Fewer Visits, More Flying In Each
You can block-book consecutive hours rather than take whatever single slot is left, which is what makes a twenty-four mile drive sensible. Two flights in an afternoon, or a flight plus a session in the Redbird, or a lesson plus ground work. We instruct from nine in the morning until nine at night, seven days a week.
4
Nothing Forces You To Move On
Whatever you decide after the private certificate, it happens on this same ramp with the same instructors: instrument at $11,700, multi-engine in the Seminole at $5,100, or simply taking the family to Santa Ynez in a Warrior once you are checked out. Changing schools between ratings costs weeks in reassessment every time.
The Fleet
The Aircraft, And What Each One Is For
You will do your early hours in the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior or the Diamond DA20, all of them covered by your package along with the instructor. The 162 is high-winged, which keeps the sun off and leaves the ground in plain view for navigation over the Santa Monica Mountains. The Warrior and the DA20 are low-winged, so the wing stays clear of the turn and the sky above you stays open. Most students try both types in the first fortnight and then settle on whichever one they stopped noticing first.
Above that sit the aircraft you might want later. The Piper Arrow II has retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries a glass panel, turbocharging and an airframe parachute, and it is the type most owners around the Conejo Valley eventually buy into. The twin-engine Piper Seminole is the aircraft behind the $5,100 Multi-Engine Rating. The Redbird MCX, $189 for a sixty-minute session, does the repetitive procedural work indoors, which is where a careful student saves several thousand dollars over a full course.
From The Air
Agoura Hills From The Practice Area
Four features that identify home eight minutes after take-off.
🏌️
Lake Lindero
A small bright pond with a nine-hole course wrapped around it, sitting oddly on its own on the north side of the freeway. It is the first thing most students learn to spot when returning westbound.
🐎
Old Agoura And The Chesebro Road Ranches
Big irregular lots, arenas and turnouts where the rest of the town is laid out in neat curved streets. From the air the boundary between the two is a hard line you can trace with a finger.
🚗
Kanan Road And The Three Tunnels
The road climbs south out of town and disappears into the mountains in a series of bores, reappearing lower each time until it reaches the sea at Zuma. It is the cleanest visual route from the Valley side to the coast.
🌊
Malibou Lake
A dark irregular shape held in the folds below the ridge, ringed by cabins and reached by one narrow road. From two thousand five hundred feet it reads as the only still water in a very wrinkled landscape.
FAQ
Common Questions
Twenty-four miles, and twenty-six to twenty-eight minutes on a reasonable run east along the 101. Add fifteen in the weekday morning build-up between Calabasas and Reseda. You exit at Balboa Boulevard and turn north, and we are the second block past the airport boundary with our own free car park outside the door.
It is a reasonable option if a sport license is all you want. For anything beyond that, weigh the fleet and the weather. The Oxnard plain holds the marine layer longer than the Valley does, and no twin, complex single or full-motion simulator sits on that field, where we have no operation of our own. Most people who intend to keep going choose the drive east.
The standard private pilot course is $10,900 and the premium version is $22,500, which buys more hours and a faster path rather than a different certificate. Sport pilot is $8,400 and the teen package is $4,200. Financing is available through Stratus Financial or through payment plans we run in house.
Twice a week is the rhythm that finishes a certificate in months rather than years. Once a fortnight roughly doubles both the time and the cost, because each lesson starts by re-teaching the last. Given the drive, most Agoura students book two-hour blocks so a single trip covers a flight and a briefing.
Constantly. The western practice areas sit over the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills, which puts Chesebro, Malibou Lake and the Kanan corridor under the wing on ordinary lessons. Students from this area learn navigation unusually quickly because the ground beneath them is already familiar from the road.
You need a third-class medical certificate from an FAA-designated examiner before you fly solo, and most healthy applicants get one without difficulty. There is no minimum age to start lessons; solo is permitted at sixteen and the private certificate at seventeen. You also need to read, speak and understand English.
We look at the actual conditions rather than the view from your driveway, because it is frequently gray in the Conejo Valley and clear over the Valley floor. If the weather genuinely will not allow flying, a $189 sixty-minute session in the Redbird simulator keeps the lesson useful, and it counts. We would rather move a flight than fly a bad one.
A discovery flight, from $229. You fly the aircraft yourself with an instructor beside you, the time goes in a logbook with your name on it, and the whole cost comes off your course if you enroll within twenty-four hours. If you would rather talk before spending anything, the in-person consultation is free.
Talk To Us
Twenty-Eight Minutes, Then The Left Seat
Drive it once at half past nine on a weekday morning and see what the field is actually like before you commit to anything. Call (818) 290-8249 for a free consultation, or book a $229 discovery flight and turn west over your own hills.
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