A phased route from no logbook at all to a commercial certificate and an instructor rating, flown at Van Nuys. Every phase names its aircraft, its hours and its price before you sign anything.
$89,000 $84,000Zero to a working certificate. $5,000 off until 30 September.
Enroll before the end of September and the discount is fixed into your program price for its whole duration.
Offer ends 30 September 2026 at 11:59pm Pacific. Applied automatically at checkout.
Sixty logged hours, which is roughly where an ordinary student on an ordinary schedule actually finishes.
Built to the regulatory floor in 14 CFR 61.109(a). Right for a student who can fly most days of the week.
Forty logged hours flown entirely in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo, on a glass panel from the first lesson.
Every certificate and rating in one sequence, at one figure fixed on the day you enroll.
One discount per enrolment, applied automatically at checkout. The discounted figure is the price you pay for the full duration of that program. Examiner fees, knowledge test fees, your medical examination and your own equipment are set by other people and are not included in any program price.
We have been teaching people to fly from this field since 2019, and in that time not one accident and not one incident has been recorded against this operation.
Every training aeroplane is inspected on the 100-hour cycle that 14 CFR 91.409(b) requires of aircraft used for instruction for hire, and that work is done in our own shop on the field rather than sent out.
No shared lessons, no two-students-per-slot arithmetic. Your instructor signs as pilot in command on every flight, because the regulation requires it and because it is the only way the standard holds.
Six types on our own books rather than leased in by the afternoon. The maintenance calendar and the flying schedule belong to the same people, so an inspection lands where we put it.
Counted from NOAA ASOS observations at Van Nuys over the twelve months to 1 August 2026 — days on which four daylight hours cleared a 3,000 ft ceiling and five statute miles of visibility.
“Accident” and “incident” are used here as 49 CFR 830.2 defines them. We publish no pass rate, no graduate count and no star rating.
Three honest answers, three different routes, three different bills. Pick the one that describes you and the rest of this page will make more sense.
Never flown a light aircraft before? Sit in the left seat and take the controls over Los Angeles with an FAA-certified instructor beside you. It is logged as dual received, it counts toward your aeronautical experience, and it ends with a written read on whether the schedule in your head is realistic.
Book an assessment flightEarn the certificate that lets you carry friends and family anywhere in the country. Train one-on-one in a Cessna, a Piper or a Diamond and log the 40 hours 14 CFR 61.109(a) asks for — more honestly, the 50 to 60 most people actually take, which is what the Comprehensive route is priced against.
Compare The Three RoutesWalk in with no logbook and finish with every certificate and rating in one sequence — private, instrument, commercial, the multi-engine class rating, and the instructor ratings that let you get paid while you build the hours toward 1,500. One figure, fixed on the day you enroll.
See The Career TrackProgram prices are fixed at the figure you enroll at, for the full duration of that program. Financing opens at $2,500 down and runs to fifteen years; the estimate is an illustration, not an offer of credit.
Four ways to take the controls for an hour before you commit to anything. Every one is flown with an FAA-certified instructor beside you, logged as dual received, and credited in full against a program if you enroll within a day.
Sixty minutes of dual instruction over Los Angeles with you handling the aeroplane, and a written read at the end.
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The same hour with a passenger in the back. One of you flies, both of you see the basin from 3,000 feet.
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Flown in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo, on a Garmin Perspective glass panel, with the whole-airframe parachute overhead.
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An hour in the Piper Seminole twin. The closest thing on the ramp to the aeroplane an airline career actually starts in.
View the course→Ninety- and 120-minute versions of each are available, and a Redbird MCX simulator session is $189. Every price is on the pricing page.
Every figure below is a package, not an hourly rate: the aircraft, the fuel, your instructor, the ground instruction and the simulator time are already inside the number.
The certificate every route begins with. Standard, Comprehensive and Premium tiers.
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Flying on instruments, in weather, on a clearance. The rung the airline ladder bolts to.
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The twin rating added to a certificate you already hold, flown in the Piper Seminole.
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Every certificate and rating in one sequence, at one figure fixed the day you enroll.
View the course→Sport pilot ($8,400), the solo certificate ($5,500) and the teens program ($4,200) are on the pricing page. Sale prices apply to enrolments completed by 30 September 2026.
Six airframe types and one full-motion simulator, every one of them on our own books rather than leased in for the afternoon. The spread matters more than the count: a student who trains on one panel and meets a second at the commercial stage spends hours relearning it.
Where most sport pilot students spend their first twenty hours, and where a good many private students fly their first solo. High wing, light on the controls, and cheap enough that repetition is affordable.
The four-seat workhorse: stable in the bumps, roomy enough for a cross-country with weight to spare, and fitted with a real IFR panel — which is why most instrument students end up in it.
A composite airframe with a control stick instead of a yoke and a bubble canopy you can see the whole basin through. It teaches airwork better than anything else on the ramp.
Retractable gear and a constant-speed propeller, which is exactly what the complex endorsement in 14 CFR 61.31(e) and the commercial certificate's ten hours of complex time both require.
The twin, and the reason the multi-engine class rating is a short phase rather than a new course. Counter-rotating propellers mean there is no critical engine, which changes what an engine failure asks of you.
Turbonormalized, so it holds sea-level manifold pressure to 25,000 feet, on a Garmin Perspective glass panel with an integrated autopilot. It carries a whole-airframe parachute, and we teach pulling it as a trained decision rather than a last resort.
An FAA-approved full-motion simulator, on the field, in the same building. The cheapest place in the operation to learn a procedure and the worst one to learn a landing — so we spend its hours on scan, radio work and emergencies.
Six airframe types and one simulator, all owned and maintained in-house and inspected on the 100-hour cycle 14 CFR 91.409(b) requires. $179 an hour wet is the only hourly figure published on this site and it is available to enrolled students; the Seminole and the SR22 Turbo are bought as the $5,100 rating and the $22,000 program instead.
An enclosed cockpit on a three-axis electric motion platform, wrapped in a 210° visual system, flown through dual controls with a real Garmin G430 in the panel.
The Redbird MCX is an FAA-approved Advanced Aviation Training Device, which is the part that matters: within the limits the regulation sets, the hours you fly on the ground are hours that count in your logbook.
What it is good at is repetition and emergencies. You can fly a manoeuvre five times in the span one airborne circuit takes, and you can meet an engine fire with none of the consequences. What it is bad at is landings — so we spend its hours on scan, radio work and procedures, and the aeroplane's hours on the flare.
One guided hour with a certified instructor. Simulator hours inside a course are already paid for in the course price — two hours sit inside Standard and Premium, five inside Comprehensive. No packages, no minimums, no membership.
Eight decisions about how the school runs, each with a cost attached, and the cost named.
Six types on our own books, not leased in by the afternoon. The capital is tied up in airframes; the benefit is that the maintenance calendar and the flying schedule belong to the same people.
The 100-hour inspection 14 CFR 91.409(b) requires is done here, by people we employ, on aircraft they know. Nothing goes out to a contractor and comes back a fortnight later.
Every lesson is flown one student, one instructor, one aeroplane. No shared slots and no rotating instructor unless you ask for one.
Every course figure is published as a single number. The trade is that a fixed price is set against a realistic hour count rather than the regulatory floor, so a quick student subsidises a slower one a little.
355 training-capable days a year, measured from NOAA ASOS observations rather than asserted. The honest cost is that actual instrument conditions are scarce here, which is a real weakness for an instrument student.
Van Nuys runs a control tower inside Class D beneath the LAX Class B shelf. You are talking to a controller from your first taxi call, so radio work is ambient rather than bolted on before a checkride.
A Redbird MCX on the field. Weather never scrubs it, procedures are cheap to repeat in it, and within the regulation's limits the hours are loggable.
Twelve hours a day, every day. If your only free slot is a Sunday evening or a Tuesday at seven in the morning, the schedule can take it.
Every one of these is checkable on a visit, and a visit costs nothing. Come and ask what the airframe times are, who signs the maintenance, and how many students each instructor is carrying.
Twelve people on the roster, ten of them flight instructors. Changing instructor here does not mean changing school.
Owner & Chief Pilot
Two decades in the left seat.
Certified Flight Instructor
Unhurried in the cockpit, patient on the ground.
Certified Flight Instructor
As comfortable with a first-timer as a checkride candidate.
Certified Flight Instructor
A real answer to every question you think to ask.
Certified Flight Instructor
Builds confidence quickly. A favourite with teens.
Certified Flight Instructor
Calm and methodical, however many times it takes.
Certified Flight Instructor
Direct and encouraging in equal measure.
Certified Flight Instructor
Debriefs like a coach: what worked, what to fix.
Certified Flight Instructor
Makes Los Angeles airspace feel routine, early.
Certified Flight Instructor
Takes the intimidation out of instrument and twin flying.
Student Services
Keeps schedules and paperwork moving.
Client Experience
The first friendly voice most people hear.
Scroll sideways to meet the rest of the roster. Every instructor holds a commercial certificate or better, an instructor certificate on top of it, and a current medical.
Four steps. The first two cost less than one per cent of a career route between them, and they are also the only two that can end the plan — which is why they come first.
$229 for sixty minutes of dual instruction with you handling the aeroplane, and a written read at the end. It is logged, it counts toward aeronautical experience, and the full fee is credited to your program if you enroll inside a day.
With an Aviation Medical Examiner, ideally within the same fortnight. Take the highest class you might ever need. A condition nobody knew about is the cheapest thing to discover in month one and the most expensive to discover at the point of first solo.
Which certificate, which program, and how many flights a week you can genuinely commit to. The second half of that sentence governs both the duration and the total far more than the first half does.
Financing opens at $2,500 down. You are matched to an instructor and given recurring slots, and the syllabus and the training agreement are handed over before payment rather than afterwards.
Because the airspace you will spend your career in starts on lesson one instead of being bolted on afterwards. Van Nuys runs a control tower inside Class D, and the whole field sits beneath the Class B shelf that wraps Los Angeles International. You are talking to a controller from your first taxi call.
That is a genuine advantage and it is one of the few this site will claim. A student who learns at an untowered field has to add radio work, sequencing and clearance-reading later, usually in a hurry and usually just before a checkride. Here it is ambient. The cost is that your early lessons are busier, and some people find the first three hours overwhelming.
The field elevation is 802 ft above mean sea level, which sounds like a footnote and is not. On a hot September afternoon the density altitude runs to roughly 4,100 ft, and the aeroplane climbs like it. Learning to compute that and plan around it is a habit you keep, and it is exactly what 14 CFR 91.103 asks of a pilot in command.
At Van Nuys Airport (KVNY) in Van Nuys, California, 802 ft above mean sea level, at 7900 Balboa Blvd, Suite 108. The field runs a control tower inside Class D airspace and sits underneath the Los Angeles International Class B shelf, so radio work and airspace begin on the first lesson rather than being added later.
Since 2019 — seven years at Van Nuys, on the same field, with the same maintenance shop and the same core instructors. In that time the operation has recorded zero accidents and zero incidents.
Zero accidents and zero incidents since we began instruction in 2019, using those two words as 49 CFR 830.2 defines them. Every training aeroplane is inspected on the 100-hour cycle that 14 CFR 91.409(b) requires of aircraft used for flight instruction for hire, and that work is done in our own shop on the field.
$89,000 buys the whole sequence as one program, from no logbook to a commercial certificate and an instructor rating — and until 30 September 2026 it is $84,000. Bought a rung at a time the figures are these: a private certificate at $10,900 on Standard, $15,900 on Comprehensive or $22,500 on Premium, each $500 less during the back-to-school offer; the instrument rating is $11,700; adding the multi-engine class rating costs $5,100. Financing opens at $2,500 down.
$500 off every private pilot program and $5,000 off the zero-to-airline program, for enrolments completed by 11:59pm Pacific on 30 September 2026. It applies automatically at checkout, and the discounted figure is then fixed as your program price for that program's full duration.
No. Training here is under 14 CFR part 61. A part 141 school runs an FAA-approved course outline with a fixed lesson order; a part 61 school builds to the same aeronautical experience requirements with the freedom to reorder them, which is why a phase can be compressed when you are ready and stretched when you are not.
Six types, all owned and maintained in-house: the Cessna 162 Skycatcher, the Piper Warrior, the Diamond DA20-C1, the Piper Arrow II, the Piper Seminole twin and the Cirrus SR22 Turbo. There is also a Redbird MCX full-motion simulator on the field. Which one you fly depends on the phase — first solos happen in the Skycatcher, instrument work mostly in the Warrior, the complex endorsement in the Arrow, and the multi-engine rating in the Seminole.
Yes — a Redbird MCX, which is an FAA-approved Advanced Aviation Training Device with a three-axis electric motion platform, a 210° wraparound visual system, an enclosed cockpit, dual controls and a real Garmin G430 in the panel. A guided session is $189, and within the limits the regulation sets those hours are loggable: up to 2.5 toward a private certificate, 10 toward an instrument rating, 50 toward a commercial and 25 toward an ATP.
$179 the hour, wet, in a single-engine aeroplane, and only for enrolled students. It buys the airframe and the fuel that goes through it. Instruction is paid for out of the program price rather than out of that figure, and neither the Piper Seminole nor the Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries a published hourly figure at all.
Flying most weekdays, the sequence from zero hours to a flight instructor rating runs roughly twelve to eighteen months, and the hour-building toward 1,500 sits on top of that. Two lessons a week turns the same sequence into several years. Tempo is the single largest variable and you control most of it.
A ramp is far easier to judge in person than in a photograph. You are welcome to come and look at the aircraft before you book anything at all — bring the awkward questions.
Ask what the airframe times are, ask who signs the maintenance, ask how many students each instructor is carrying, and ask what happens when a lesson is cancelled for weather. A school that cannot answer those four in front of you is telling you something.
Nothing on this page settles whether you will enjoy the work, take instruction well, or hold up in an aeroplane that is moving. An hour settles all three. Book it, fly it, read the written debrief, and then decide with something concrete in front of you.
Airline Pilot Flight School is a 14 CFR part 61 flight training provider at Van Nuys Airport, operating since 2019. The word “airline” in the name describes the destination our students are training toward. It does not describe a relationship.
We are not an airline and we are not owned by one. There is no cadet program here, no pathway agreement, no conditional offer and no hiring relationship with any carrier. Nothing sold on this site guarantees an interview, a job or a salary, and a training provider that implies otherwise is describing something outside its control.
The safety record stated on this page — zero accidents and zero incidents since 2019 — uses those two words as 49 CFR 830.2 defines them, and describes this operation only. No pass rate, no graduate count and no star rating is published, because a figure drawn from a small sample is noise dressed as evidence.
Hiring minimums, seniority and pay are set by carriers rather than by training providers. The pilot career outlook page uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook and nothing else.
The assessment flight is the first hour of the syllabus and a two-way evaluation. You fly it from the left seat with an instructor beside you, they write down what they saw, and you get an honest read on whether the plan is realistic. It is loggable, and it is credited in full against enrolment if you enroll within 24 hours.
What happens on an assessment flight →
