How to enroll
Seven steps, and the first two happen before you pay anything. That order is deliberate: the medical and one hour in an airplane settle the two questions that everything else depends on, and both are far cheaper than discovering the answers later.
How do you enrol in flight training here?
By booking an assessment flight, sitting an FAA medical examination, choosing a program, providing identity documents, settling the TSA position if it applies to you, paying a deposit and then agreeing a schedule. Nothing about it is complicated and the order matters more than any single step.
The reason the medical and the assessment flight come first is that they are the only two steps that can end the process, and they are also the two least expensive. An examination answers whether the plan is available to you. An hour in the airplane, with you flying, answers whether you want it. Together they cost a fraction of one per cent of a career route.
Everything after those two is administration. Identity documents, a deposit, a syllabus and a calendar. None of it is difficult, and a school that makes it feel difficult is usually managing something other than paperwork.
One thing worth saying at the top. Nothing here is a subscription and there is no automatic progression from one phase to the next. Each phase is entered deliberately, at a price fixed when you enrolled in it, and you can stop at a boundary without a conversation.
What are the steps, in order?
Two of them cost money before you have committed to anything, and both are refundable in the sense that matters: the assessment flight comes off the program price, and the medical is a document you keep whatever you do next.
Book the assessment flight
$229 for sixty minutes of dual instruction, with you handling the airplane. It is logged, it counts toward the aeronautical experience it qualifies for, and it comes off the program price in full if you enrol inside a day. No medical certificate is needed for it, because the instructor holds legal command.
Sit the FAA medical examination
With an Aviation Medical Examiner, and ideally in the same fortnight as the assessment flight. Take the highest class you might ever need. The medical cluster on this site explains the standards, the durations and what a deferral costs in time, and it argues hard for doing this before any money moves.
Choose the program
Standard, Comprehensive or Premium for a private certificate, individual ratings if you already hold one, or the full career track. Every price is published and fixed at the point you enrol, and the differences between the three private programs are hours and aircraft rather than quality.
Provide identity documents
A government-issued photo identification, and documentation of citizenship or nationality where that applies. Under 49 CFR 1552.7 a flight training provider has to establish where you stand before any training begins, and that check happens once rather than at every lesson.
Settle the TSA position if it applies
If you are not a United States citizen or national, 49 CFR 1552 requires a security threat assessment and a Determination of Eligibility from TSA before flight training starts. The dedicated page walks through it. If you are a citizen or national, this step is a document check and nothing more.
Pay the deposit and sign the agreement
Arrangements here begin from $2,500 down, with the balance structured around the phases you are flying. The training agreement, the syllabus and the refund terms are all provided before you pay rather than afterwards, and the refund terms are published on their own page.
Agree a schedule and fly
You are matched with a primary instructor and a set of recurring slots. Tempo is agreed at this point rather than assumed, because that one variable governs both the duration and the cost. Then the first syllabus lesson.
What do you need to have ready?
Four things for the first appointment and two more before solo. Nothing on the list is expensive, and nothing on it will surprise a reader who has got this far.
For the assessment flight
A government-issued photo identification, comfortable clothing and closed shoes, and sunglasses. That is genuinely all. You do not need a headset, a logbook, charts or any equipment, and you should not buy any of it before you have decided to continue.
- Photo identification
- Closed shoes and comfortable clothes
- Sunglasses
- No equipment purchase required
For enrolment
Identity documentation as above, plus documentation of citizenship or nationality where it applies, plus your FAA medical certificate if it has been issued by then. Where you are not a United States citizen or national, the TSA determination has to be in place before flight training starts.
- Photo identification
- Citizenship or nationality documentation where applicable
- Your medical certificate, once issued
- A TSA Determination of Eligibility where it applies
Before your first solo
A student pilot certificate, and a medical certificate of at least third class, because solo is exercised under student pilot privileges, and a medical is required for those by 14 CFR 61.23(a)(3). Your instructor also has to have endorsed you, which is a judgement about readiness rather than a form.
This is why the medical sits at step two rather than step six. Solo arrives roughly a third of the way through a private course, and a deferral discovered at that point stops the syllabus dead.
Equipment, and when to buy it
Later than most people do. Every private pilot program here includes the books and the training materials, so what is worth owning early is a headset and, eventually, a tablet carrying charts. Ask your instructor before spending, and buy after two or three lessons rather than before the first.
No figures for equipment appear anywhere on this site, because we neither sell it nor set its price. The same applies to knowledge test fees, examiner fees and your medical examination.
What are you choosing between?
Every published program, with the figure fixed at the point of enrolment and nothing repriced at a phase boundary. The assessment flight comes off whichever one you choose, in full, if you enrol within a day of flying it.
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 you verify before enrolling?
Five items, each confirmable without taking anybody’s word. Add to them the two documents you should read before paying: the syllabus and the refund terms.
Airframe 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 requestProgram prices withheld until you enquire
None. Every program figure is printed on the site, nothing is offered as a spread, and the price you sign for is the one you read.
Stated rather than impliedWhat should you ask before you pay a deposit?
Five questions, and you should ask them here as readily as anywhere else. A school that answers all five before taking money is behaving properly; one that will not is telling you something you should listen to.
What is the total price, as a single figure, for the content I am buying? Every program on this site answers that on the pricing page, and no figure anywhere here is offered as a range.
What is not included? Examiner fees, knowledge test fees, your medical and your own equipment. Those are named on this site and deliberately not priced, because they belong to other people.
What does additional instruction cost if I need more hours than the program contains? This is the one we cannot answer with a published figure, and rather than invent one we will say so plainly: ask us, and have the answer in writing before enrolling. Put the same question to every other school.
What happens if I stop? Training delivered has been delivered. What happens to anything not yet flown is on the terms and refunds page, which is published rather than negotiated.
And who will teach me, and can I change? Eleven instructors, matched at enrolment, changeable on request with no reason required.
What enrolling here does and does not commit you to
Enrolment is for the program you enrol in, at the price fixed on that day, for the content that program states. There is no automatic progression to a further phase and no subscription. Nothing in it is a guarantee of a certificate, an interview, a job or a salary. This is a part 61 flight training provider with no cadet program, pathway agreement or hiring relationship with any airline.
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 enrolling
For the first flight, a government-issued photo identification and closed shoes. That is all. The instructor holds legal command of the airplane, so no medical certificate is required of you at that stage. Before solo you need a student pilot certificate, plus a medical of third class or better, which 14 CFR 61.23(a)(3) requires.
Arrangements here begin from $2,500 down, with the balance structured around the phases you are flying. Every program price is fixed at the point you enrol and nothing is recalculated at a phase boundary, so the total you plan against does not move afterwards.
Not to enrol and not to fly the early lessons, but you should have sat the examination anyway. Solo requires a medical and arrives roughly a third of the way through a private course, and a deferral discovered at that point stops the syllabus while the FAA asks for records.
Yes. It is an hour of dual instruction, logged as such, and it counts toward the aeronautical experience it qualifies for. It also comes off the program price in full if you enrol within a day of flying it, which makes it one of the least risky purchases on this site.
A government-issued photo identification, and documentation of citizenship or nationality where that applies. Under 49 CFR 1552.7 a flight training provider must establish before any training begins that you are a United States citizen or national, a Department of Defense endorsee, or a candidate holding a valid Determination of Eligibility.
A candidate under 49 CFR 1552 needs a security threat assessment and a Determination of Eligibility from TSA before flight training begins. The process runs through the FTSP Portal and has its own page on this site. It is unrelated to the medical and the two can proceed in parallel.
Usually within days, and it depends on scheduling rather than on paperwork. What you agree at enrolment is a tempo and a set of recurring slots, and that conversation is worth having carefully because tempo governs the duration of a certificate and its cost alike.
Yes, by asking, and no reason is required. There are eleven instructors. Enrolment matches you to one of them for the sake of continuity, and a poor fit costs money for every hour it goes unaddressed. Raise it early rather than politely enduring it.
None. Every private pilot program here includes books and training materials, and a headset can wait until you have flown two or three lessons and asked your instructor what to look for. Buying equipment before the first lesson is the most common way new students waste money.
Yes, and many people do. The phases are sold separately at published prices, so you can complete a private certificate and stop cleanly, or add an instrument rating later without having committed to anything beyond it. Nothing here progresses automatically.
Before and after enrolling
Before you enrol
Get your medical before you enrollTSA flight training approvalTerms and refundsContactWhat you would be enrolling in
Every program price on one pageAirline pilot training programThe assessment flightThe first two steps happen before you commit to anything
Book an hour in an airplane and book a medical examination. Between them they settle whether this plan is available to you and whether you want it, and neither one obliges you to enrol in anything.
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 →