One road connects Northridge to the runway: Balboa Boulevard, south past Nordhoff and Roscoe, seven miles to a towered airport with a full training fleet on the ramp.
Northridge is organized around a campus of roughly forty thousand students, and that shapes who walks through our door from this part of the valley. We open more logbooks for people under twenty-five here than almost anywhere else we serve. Some are CSUN students working out whether aviation is a career or a hobby, some are high schoolers from Granada Hills and Chatsworth whose parents drove them over for a birthday flight, and a good number are graduates who took an office job and discovered they wanted a license more than a promotion.
The geography is unusually simple. Balboa Boulevard runs the length of Northridge and keeps going south until it reaches the western fence of Van Nuys Airport, so the trip is one road, no freeway and about fifteen minutes. Nothing else about learning to fly in Los Angeles is that easy. Students living near Nordhoff and Reseda often treat a lesson the way they treat a gym session, which is precisely the habit that gets a certificate finished inside a single academic year.
There is also useful ground under you here. Northridge sits between the airport and the open country north of the 118, so the practice areas start almost immediately: gentle terrain over the Santa Susana foothills, the reservoir basins, and the wide agricultural remnants toward Porter Ranch. Ground reference maneuvers, slow flight and stalls all happen within ten minutes of takeoff, which means less of each lesson is spent in transit and more of it is spent actually learning something.
Money is the honest question for a student town, so here are the numbers. An introductory flight in the Redbird full-motion simulator is $189 for a sixty-minute session. A real one, with you flying the aircraft, is $229 and it is credited back in full if you enroll within twenty-four hours. The teen package is $4,200, a sport pilot license is $8,400, and the full private certificate is $10,900. Financing runs through Stratus Financial or an in-house payment plan.
Our Courses
Ten programs flown out of Van Nuys Airport, with real pricing on every one. Start with an hour at the controls, or go straight through to airline-hireable qualifications — it is the same ladder either way.
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Start Here
The first hour at the controls, over Los Angeles, with an instructor beside you. It is the entry point to every course below — and the cheapest way to find out whether flying is actually for you.
From$229
Open 9 AM–9 PM, Seven Days · (818) 290-8249
CertificateMost Popular
The one most people mean by “learn to fly.” Fly with an instructor, fly alone, then carry passengers on your own certificate.
Fly With An Instructor Fly Solo Carry Passengers $10,900 Enroll Now
Youth Program
Ages 10–15. For young people who want to start before they can legally solo.
$4,200 View Course
Milestone
Enough training to take an aircraft around the pattern alone. The day everything changes.
$5,500 View Course
Certificate
A real certificate with fewer hours and narrower privileges. The shortest honest route to flying yourself.
$8,400 View Course
Bundle
Private Pilot with flight time, ground instruction and study materials bundled into one price.
$15,900 View CourseBundle
The same certificate as Private, with the most flight time before your checkride. Eighty logged hours, ground instruction and materials, all in one price.
80 Logged Hours Ground School Included Materials Included $22,500 View Course
Rating
The rating after Private. Turns a fair-weather pilot into a useful one who can file, launch and land in cloud.
$11,700 View Course
Rating
For pilots already certificated who are adding a twin. Trained in our own Piper Seminole.
$5,100 View Course
Our Fleet
Diamond DA20, Cessna 162, Piper Arrow II and our Piper Seminole twin — all on the field at Van Nuys.
View The FleetThe Full Route
Zero experience to airline-hireable qualifications, in one continuous program rather than nine separate ones. Financing is available, and every hour of it is flown out of Van Nuys.
$89,000Financing Available
Free In-Person Tour Before You Commit
Book It Or Gift It
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
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 Or Gift
Same Price
Two Seats
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 Or Gift
Same Price
The Nice One
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
$499Book Or Gift
Same Price
Twin Engine
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 Or Gift
Same Price
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.
From anywhere between Devonshire and Nordhoff, get onto Balboa Boulevard and head south. You cross Nordhoff, Parthenia and Roscoe, pass under the Sherman Way lights, and the airport perimeter appears on your left just past Saticoy. Seven miles, about fifteen minutes, no freeway, no canyon, no toll on your patience. If Balboa is dug up, Reseda or Tampa south to Sherman Way and then east works out within a minute or two of the same time.
Coming from the CSUN campus itself, Zelzah south to Nordhoff and then east to Balboa is the tidy version, and it avoids the queue that builds up at Reseda and Nordhoff between classes. From Porter Ranch or the top of Balboa, the same road simply carries you the whole way down, though the stretch below Rinaldi crawls a little during the morning peak. Nothing about this drive is dramatic or complicated, which is rather the point of it.
Parking at 7900 Balboa Boulevard is free, on site, ungated and never full, which is not something Northridge students say about anywhere on campus. Our office is Suite 108A. The address is a shared hangar complex with a number of separate aviation businesses inside it, so use the suite number rather than looking for a sign from the road. We are open nine in the morning to nine at night, seven days a week, including exam weeks.
The training airspace runs north and west, over the Simi Hills and the open ground beyond the 118, which is the direction you are already facing. Less transit time means more of each lesson is spent on maneuvers. Over a full certificate that difference shows up as real progress inside the package you have already paid for.
Two parallel runways, a full-time control tower and steady traffic mean you learn clearances and sequencing in your first lessons instead of avoiding them. Students who train at quiet fields tend to reach their checkride still uneasy on the radio, and confidence there is what makes flying into busier airports afterward feel routine.
Programs are quoted whole, one price covering the aircraft, your instructor, ground school and the simulator time in that package. A sport pilot license is $8,400 and the standard private certificate $10,900, with financing through Stratus Financial or an in-house payment plan spreading the rest. The first consultation is free and nobody will push you toward the expensive package if the cheaper one is the right fit.
Plenty of people start at nineteen wanting to fly for fun and finish at twenty-three wanting to fly for a living. Everything that transition needs, from a complex single to a twin to an airline-track program, is on the same ramp with the same instructors, so nobody has to start again somewhere else.
Your first hours will be in the Cessna 162 Skycatcher or the Piper Warrior, both good teachers: light enough to respond, stable enough to forgive, and completely unable to hide lazy footwork on the rudder. The Diamond DA20 is the enthusiast's trainer, with a bubble canopy that puts the whole Santa Susana skyline in front of you. All three are flown under the same package price, and the Redbird MCX full-motion simulator, $189 for a sixty-minute session on its own, is where procedures, emergencies and instrument scan get cheap repetition between flights.
The rest of the fleet is what you grow into. The Piper Arrow II has retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller, the complex aircraft commercial students need. The Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries a full glass cockpit and a whole-airframe parachute, and it is the machine that makes a graduation weekend in Monterey or Sedona plausible. The Piper Seminole is the twin used for the $5,100 multi-engine rating. All of it on one ramp at Van Nuys Airport, seven miles south of Nordhoff.
Head northwest out of Van Nuys and Northridge is underneath you inside four minutes.
A green rectangle of quads and playing fields with the arched front of the Oviatt Library at its heart, unmistakable in the middle of a residential grid. It is the biggest single landmark between the airport and the 118.
The surviving block of citrus at the corner of the university, rows of dark trees in a perfect rectangle where the valley's old agriculture used to be. From the air it is a small piece of the nineteen thirties still sitting there.
The long roofs and parking decks at Tampa and Plummer, rebuilt after the 1994 earthquake tore the original apart. Its footprint and the wide lots around it make an easy visual fix from several miles away.
The green cut climbing north out of the housing toward the Santa Susana foothills, with the wash winding through the trees below. It marks where the valley floor finally stops and the hills take over.
About seven miles and fifteen minutes, straight down Balboa Boulevard with no freeway involved. From the CSUN campus, Nordhoff east to Balboa and then south is the simplest version. It is close enough that a lesson fits between classes or after a shift, which is the main reason students from here progress quickly.
Some can and some cannot, and we would rather tell you which. A sport pilot license at $8,400 gets you flying legally for less than the full certificate. Financing through Stratus Financial or an in-house payment plan spreads the cost. Starting with the $189 simulator session or the $229 discovery flight costs very little and tells you a great deal.
In our own lot at 7900 Balboa Boulevard. It is free, ungated, on site and never full, and there is no permit or app involved. Come to Suite 108A: the address is a shared hangar complex with several unrelated aviation businesses, so the suite number is what gets you to the right door on your first visit.
There is no minimum age to begin lessons. A student can fly solo at sixteen and hold a private certificate at seventeen, and the teen package at $4,200 is built to fit around a school year. Plenty of families in Northridge and Granada Hills start a fourteen or fifteen-year-old flying and simply pace the training toward those birthdays.
The standard program is $10,900. The comprehensive version, with substantially more dual instruction and simulator time included, is $15,900, and the premium version is $22,500. The discovery flight fee is credited in full against whichever you choose if you enroll within twenty-four hours, and the first in-person consultation is free.
Four to six months at two lessons a week for most adults, and often a single academic year for a student flying around a timetable. Forty hours is the FAA minimum and very few people finish there. Sixty to seventy is realistic, and how often you fly matters more than anything else in deciding which end of that range you land on.
Yes, and the honest route is long. The private certificate comes first, then the instrument rating at $11,700, then commercial and multi-engine work and a great many hours. The Airline Pilot Program covers that whole sequence from zero at $89,000. Anyone considering it should sit down with us and look at the timeline and the financing before committing.
No. Most private pilots rent, and the same aircraft you trained in are available to you once you are checked out, the Cirrus SR22 Turbo included when you want something faster for a longer trip. Ring the desk at Suite 108A and we will tell you what is free and on what terms. Ownership only starts making sense at a level of flying most people never reach.
Call (818) 290-8249 and take a slot that fits your timetable, any day between nine in the morning and nine at night. We are seven miles south of Nordhoff at 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108A, with free parking and a free first consultation.
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.
Loved On Google
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
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...
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...
Reviews shown verbatim, exactly as each reviewer published them.
Aviation News
Notes from the flight line at Van Nuys — weather, regulation changes, checkride questions and the cost of training, written up as they come.
Open 7 days · 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM
Los Angeles Flight School
