Flying days and training tempo
Across the twelve months ending 1 August 2026, NOAA ASOS observations at Van Nuys recorded 355 days on which four or more daylight hours held a ceiling at 3,000 feet or better with five statute miles or better of visibility. This page asks the question a student actually has: how many lessons does that cost you, and which ones?
How much flight training does weather actually cost you here?
About ten days out of 365, and not the ten you would guess. NOAA ASOS observations for the twelve months ending 1 August 2026 counted 355 days at Van Nuys where four daylight hours or more cleared a ceiling at 3,000 feet with five statute miles of visibility. That leaves ten days in the year on which a training slot could not have been flown at any time of day.
The threshold matters more than the headline. Basic VFR, which is a thousand feet and three statute miles, was met on 363 of those days, so eight days separate legally flyable from usefully trainable. That gap is the honest part of the measurement: a 1,200-foot ceiling is legal and it is no use at all for a lesson on steep turns.
Turn the annual figure into a schedule and it stops sounding like marketing. A student flying five days a week books roughly 260 slots in a year, and a ten-day loss spread across the calendar costs about seven of them. A student flying twice a week books about 104 and loses around three. Neither number is what stretches a private certificate into a second year.
What does stretch it is everything else: your own availability, the instructor’s, the airplane’s, and the gap between lessons that forces relearning. Weather is the excuse most often given for slow progress here and it is almost never the actual cause. That is a position and this page is prepared to defend it with the arithmetic above.
Which lessons get cancelled, and when?
Early-morning slots in late spring and early summer, and almost nothing else. Marine air moves inland overnight and burns off through the morning, which makes the loss a property of the clock rather than of the calendar.
The June morning, hour by hour
June is the worst month for this and its shape is instructive. Of the 7am observations that month, 40 per cent met training minima. By 11am the same month it had climbed to 93 per cent, and from 1pm onward it ran between 97 and 100 per cent.
For a student, that is not a warning about June. It is an instruction about scheduling. A 7am lesson in June is a coin toss and a 1pm lesson in June is essentially certain, and the difference between those two bookings is larger than the difference between any two months of the year.
- 7am in June: 40 per cent of observations met training minima
- 11am in June: 93 per cent
- 1pm onward in June: 97 to 100 per cent
- The variable is the hour, not the month
August, and why the field matters
At 7am in August, Van Nuys met training minima on 84 per cent of observations. Santa Monica, ten miles closer to the water, managed 48 per cent in the same hour of the same month.
That is the single most useful comparison in this dataset, because it shows how local the effect is. Two fields in the same basin, in the same month, at the same hour, differ by thirty-six percentage points. Choosing an airport further from the coastline is a bigger lever on morning availability than choosing a season.
What this measurement does not capture
Three things, stated plainly because a study that publishes only its strengths is an advertisement. Automated surface observations are known to misread thin or broken layers, so a small number of days are counted in the wrong column in both directions. Wind is not modelled at all, and a gusty crosswind day can be perfectly legal and entirely unsuitable for a student on their first solo. And a day that qualifies as capable is not a day on which every lesson could be flown: instrument students want cloud, and there is very little of it here.
That last one is a real downside of training in Southern California and it is discussed properly on the instrument training and actual IMC page, which does not pretend otherwise.
How does this field compare with other training airports?
Eight comparator airports measured on identical thresholds over the same twelve months. The interesting part is not that Van Nuys is high; it is how wide the spread is, and what a two-hundred-and-seventy-day field does to a timeline.
The Southern California group
Close together on the map and further apart than you would expect on the numbers. Proximity to the coast is doing most of the work.
- Van Nuys355 days
- Burbank356 days
- Santa Monica343 days
- Whiteman334 days
- Torrance332 days
The national comparators
Two dry-climate fields and two in the Pacific Northwest, on the same thresholds. The spread across the country is roughly eighty days.
- Phoenix Deer Valley356 days
- Kissimmee, Florida355 days
- Everett, Washington278 days
- Hillsboro, Oregon277 days
What the spread is worth
Convert it into lessons rather than days. A full-time student booking five slots a week loses about seven a year here and about fifty-five at a 277-day field, which is most of a phase.
- At 355 days~7 slots lost from 260
- At 277 days~55 slots lost from 260
- DifferenceRoughly two months
- BasisArithmetic on the figures above
What does the tempo actually buy you?
Fewer total hours for the same certificate. Nothing in a syllabus is priced by the calendar, but a student flying four times a week relearns less between lessons than a student flying once a fortnight, and relearning is the single largest source of hours above the minimum.
Airline Career Track
Every phase from the first logged hour to a flight instructor rating, priced once and fixed at the point of enrolment.
- ✓Five phases under a single number
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓No repricing at a phase boundary
- ✓Part 61 from start to finish
Private Pilot — Comprehensive
Sixty hours in the logbook: fifty-five airborne, five in the box, fifty flown dual, plus ten hours of ground school.
- ✓60 hours logged
- ✓5 simulator sessions
- ✓10 hours of ground school
- ✓Books and materials included
Instrument Rating
Phase two of the career route, and the rating that changes how you fly more than any other single step.
- ✓40 instrument hours under 61.65(d)
- ✓An IFR cross-country of 250 nautical miles
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
Multi-Engine Add-On
The class rating that opens twin-engine flying, and later the ability to instruct in one.
- ✓No hour floor under 61.63(c)(3)
- ✓Ten to fifteen hours is typical
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
What can be verified about this analysis?
The dataset is public, free and citable, which is the whole reason this page exists. Anybody with a browser can reproduce the count from the same source.
Training-capable days, twelve months to 1 August 2026
Counted from NOAA Automated Surface Observing System reports retrieved through the Iowa Environmental Mesonet. A day was admitted only where four or more daylight hours held a ceiling at or above 3,000 feet with visibility at or above five statute miles.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetAirframe types on the ramp, owned rather than brokered
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. The airplanes belong to the operation, so the maintenance calendar is ours and not a lessor’s.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors working here
Each carries a commercial certificate or an ATP beneath, an instructor certificate above it, and a medical in date. You are matched with one of them, and you may ask for another if the fit is wrong.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23 · 61.195Training-capable days measured across twelve months at this field
Counted from NOAA ASOS observations for the year ending 1 August 2026, admitting a day only where the ceiling held at 3,000 feet with five statute miles of visibility across four qualifying daylight hours.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetA session in the full-motion simulator
Two of those sessions sit inside the Standard and the Premium private pilot programs and five inside the Comprehensive, and weather never takes one away.
Published, not quoted on requestHow was the 355 figure produced?
By counting hourly surface observations against a fixed pair of thresholds and requiring a minimum number of qualifying daylight hours per day. There is no modelling in it and no forecast, and the raw data is a public archive that anybody may pull.
The source is the Automated Surface Observing System at Van Nuys, retrieved through the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, over the twelve months ending 1 August 2026. Each hourly observation was tested against a ceiling at 3,000 feet and visibility at five statute miles. A day counted only where four daylight hours or more passed that test, because a single clear hour in the middle of an otherwise closed day is not a training day.
A second column was counted at basic VFR, a thousand feet and three statute miles, and produced 363 days. Publishing both is deliberate. The difference between the two columns is the part of the year that is legal to fly in and unhelpful to learn in, and a study that reported only the higher number would be measuring the wrong thing.
The same procedure was run at fifteen Southern California airports, which is where the comparator figures come from. Identical thresholds, identical period, identical qualifying-hour rule.
One thing this page does not yet publish is a full hour-by-month matrix for every month of the year. The June and August figures above are the two that have been worked through in detail. The rest of the matrix exists in the source data and will be added here rather than approximated in the meantime.
Reuse this freely. The underlying observations are public and cost nothing, the thresholds are stated above, and any competent person can rebuild the count and check us. That is the point of publishing a method alongside a number.
What this measurement is not
It is a count of surface observations at one airport against two stated thresholds, and it is not a forecast, a guarantee or a promise about your schedule. Automated observations misread thin layers, wind is not modelled anywhere in it, and a day that qualifies is not a day on which every lesson could have been flown. No claim is made here about days of sunshine, and no figure other than 355 is used anywhere on this site for training-capable days.
Airline Pilot Flight School trains under part 61 of 14 CFR, at Van Nuys Airport. It is not an airline, it is not owned by one, and no carrier holds a cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring arrangement with us. We do not guarantee an interview, a job or a salary.
No pass rate, no graduate count and no rating of any kind is published on this site. The operation is new, any such figure would come from a sample too small to mean anything, and inventing one is the easiest lie available in this industry. What is published instead is the syllabus, the price, the hours and the regulation behind each requirement.
Questions about flying days
355 of them cleared the training threshold used here across the twelve months ending 1 August 2026, counted from NOAA ASOS observations: four daylight hours or more at a ceiling of 3,000 feet with five statute miles. At basic VFR, a thousand feet and three statute miles, the count was 363.
About seven a year if you fly five days a week, and about three if you fly twice a week. That is straightforward arithmetic on ten non-qualifying days spread across 365, and it is far smaller than most people expect. Scheduling and aircraft availability cost a student many more slots than weather does here.
Early morning, in late spring and early summer. In June, 40 per cent of 7am observations met training minima, against 93 per cent at 11am and between 97 and 100 per cent from 1pm onward. Moving a June booking from 7am to 1pm changes it from a coin toss to a near certainty.
It is a real problem for morning slots in specific months and almost nothing outside that. The effect is also intensely local: at 7am in August, 84 per cent of observations at Van Nuys met training minima while Santa Monica, ten miles nearer the coast, managed 48 per cent in the same hour.
Burbank recorded 356 days and Phoenix Deer Valley 356 on identical thresholds, with Kissimmee at 355. Santa Monica reached 343, Whiteman 334 and Torrance 332. Everett in Washington recorded 278 and Hillsboro in Oregon 277, which is a difference of roughly eighty days a year against this field.
From Automated Surface Observing System reports at Van Nuys, retrieved through the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, for the twelve months ending 1 August 2026. Every hourly observation was tested against a ceiling at 3,000 feet and visibility at five statute miles, and a day was admitted only where four daylight hours or more passed. The archive is public and the count is reproducible.
Indirectly, and the mechanism is relearning rather than the weather itself. A student flying four times a week spends less of each lesson recovering ground than one flying fortnightly, and that recovered time is the biggest single source of hours above the regulatory minimum. Tempo is the lever; weather is what makes tempo possible.
No, and that is the honest downside of the same climate that produces 355 training days. Southern California gives an instrument student very little actual cloud, which is good for tempo and poor for logging actual instrument conditions. The instrument training and actual IMC page deals with that properly rather than glossing it.
Three, and all three are published. Automated observations are known to misread thin or broken cloud layers. Wind is not modelled at all, so a legal but gusty day can still be unsuitable for a student. And a qualifying day is not one on which every possible lesson could have been flown, since different exercises want different conditions.
Rarely at this field, and when it happens the useful substitute is usually a simulator session, and a ceiling never cancels one of those. A session costs $189 standalone and is already included inside the private pilot programs, though it is a good substitute for procedural work and a poor one for handling.
Where to go next
Ten days a year are lost to weather; the rest are lost to scheduling
The measurement says the sky is available. Whether you use it is a question about your calendar, the instructor’s, and the airplane’s. Start with one hour and find out what a real training tempo would look like for you.
Fly the aeroplane once, then decide
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 →