Our fleet
Six airframe types, all owned outright rather than leased in from members or brokers, and arranged as a progression rather than as a menu. The order you meet them in is the order the certificates come in, and each type is on the ramp because a specific phase of training needs it.
What aircraft will you actually fly?
Six types: Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Which of them you meet depends entirely on which phase you are in, and most students touch three or four across a full career route. Every one of these airplanes belongs to the operation, which is a duller fact than it sounds and a more consequential one.
Ownership decides availability, and availability decides how fast you finish. A school flying leased or member-owned aircraft schedules around somebody else’s priorities and somebody else’s maintenance decisions. When the airframes are yours, a squawk is a decision you make on Tuesday rather than a negotiation you open on Tuesday.
It also decides what gets fixed and when. Under 14 CFR 91.409(b), any airplane on which instruction is given for hire is inspected every hundred hours of time in service. That sits on top of the annual, which every aircraft receives regardless. The rule permits the hundred-hour point to be overrun by up to ten hours only to reach a place where the work can be done, and the overrun then counts against the following hundred. The cycle does not quietly stretch.
A position, since these pages take one. Fleet variety is oversold as a feature. What matters is whether the airplane you are booked into is on the ramp on the morning you need it, and after that whether it is the right airplane for the thing you are learning. Six types is enough to cover a career route properly and small enough to keep serviceable.
What is each airplane on the ramp for?
Each of the six exists to serve a phase. Where a type carries no price here, that is deliberate: the twin and the Cirrus are sold inside programs, and this site publishes no rental rate card for anything.
Piper Warrior
Primary training, and the type most students spend the first phase in. Low wing, forgiving, and honest enough that mistakes are visible rather than absorbed.
- PhasePrivate pilot
- Rate$179 wet, enrolled students
- ConfigurationSingle-engine, fixed gear
Diamond DA20
Primary training with a different feel: light on the controls, excellent visibility, and cheap to run. Useful for building stick and rudder habits before anything gets complicated.
- PhasePrivate pilot
- Rate$179 wet, enrolled students
- ConfigurationSingle-engine, fixed gear
Cessna 162 Skycatcher
The lightest airframe on the ramp and the least demanding to operate. It suits early lessons and it suits students who want the smallest possible hourly cost while learning to handle an airplane.
- PhaseEarly training
- Rate$179 wet, enrolled students
- ConfigurationSingle-engine, fixed gear
Piper Arrow II
The complex airplane. Retractable gear, controllable-pitch propeller, and the airplane behind the complex training a commercial applicant needs under 14 CFR 61.129(a)(3)(ii).
- PhaseCommercial
- Rate$179 wet, enrolled students
- ConfigurationSingle-engine, retractable
Piper Seminole
Multi-engine training, and nothing else. Everything about the multi-engine rating happens here, including the engine-out work that is the entire point of the rating.
- PhaseMulti-engine rating
- Sold asThe $5,100 add-on
- Hourly figureNone published
Cirrus SR22 Turbo
The glass-cockpit airplane, and the one Premium students fly from the first hour. It carries a whole-airframe parachute and a cockpit philosophy unlike anything else on this list.
- PhasePremium private pilot
- Sold asThe $22,500 program
- Hourly figureNone published
How are the aircraft maintained?
On a hundred-hour cycle plus an annual, because 14 CFR 91.409 requires exactly that of an airplane used to give instruction for hire. What follows is what those two rules mean in practice, and what we will not tell you because we cannot evidence it.
The two intervals, and how they interact
91.409(a) puts every aircraft on an annual inspection within the preceding twelve calendar months. 91.409(b) adds the hundred-hour cycle for airplanes carrying people for hire and for those on which instruction is given for hire, which covers every airplane a student here will fly.
The hundred-hour interval has one narrow flexibility and it is not the one people assume. Up to ten hours over is permitted, but only while going to the place where the inspection will be carried out, and those excess hours are then subtracted from the next hundred rather than forgiven. The cycle does not drift.
- Annual inspection within twelve calendar months
- A hundred-hour inspection on instruction aircraft
- Ten hours of overrun, only to reach the shop
- The overrun counts against the following hundred
What we will not claim about safety
No accident record, no incident record and no safety statistic of any kind appears on this site. Those claims are common in this market and we are not entitled to one: the operation is new, and a clean record over a short period is a statement about sample size rather than about safety.
What can be said is what the rules require and what the aircraft ownership makes possible, and both of those are checkable. Anything beyond that would be decoration.
What is not on this site, and why
There is no rental rate card here and no page advertising aircraft hire, because what this school sells is training. The single hourly figure published anywhere is $179 wet in a single-engine airplane for enrolled students, and it covers the airframe and the fuel it burns rather than the person in the right seat.
No hourly figure is published for the twin or for the Cirrus. One is bought as the $5,100 rating; the other is flown inside the Premium program, at $22,500. Quoting an hour rate for either would describe a transaction that does not exist.
What does flying these aircraft cost?
By program, not by the hour. Every figure below is fixed at the point you enrol and none of them is a range. The one hourly number on this site exists so that enrolled students can add flying beyond a syllabus without renegotiating anything.
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 these airplanes?
Five things a stranger could confirm without taking our word for any of it. No rating, no review and no safety statistic appears among them, because none of those would be honest from a school this new.
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 is wrong with this fleet?
Two things, and both are worth knowing before you enrol. Neither is a secret and neither is unusual, but a fleet page that lists only strengths is an advertisement rather than a description.
The first is that six types is a narrow selection. There is no tailwheel airplane, no aerobatic airplane and no turbine here. If you want a tailwheel endorsement or upset training, you will do it somewhere else, and we would rather tell you that now than after you have enrolled.
The second is the Cirrus. It is a superb airplane and it is the wrong first airplane for most people. Learning to fly behind a glass cockpit in a fast, slippery, well-equipped machine tends to produce a pilot who is good at managing systems and less practised at the raw handling that shows up on a checkride. The Premium program exists because some students want it and it is honestly priced at $22,500, but buying it before you have soloed is usually the wrong order.
Ask on the assessment flight which airplane you would be booked into and why. If the answer is vague, that tells you something about any school, including this one.
What this page does not claim
No safety record, accident count or incident statistic appears on this page or anywhere on this site. The operation is new and any such figure would describe the length of the period rather than the quality of the operation. What is published instead is the inspection regime the regulations require and the fact that the airplanes are owned outright.
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 the airplanes
They are owned by the operation rather than leased in or brokered from private owners. That matters mostly for scheduling and maintenance: an airplane that belongs to the school is grounded and returned to service on our decision rather than on somebody else’s, which is what keeps a full-time syllabus moving.
Every hundred hours of time in service, plus an annual inspection within the preceding twelve calendar months. The hundred-hour cycle is imposed by 14 CFR 91.409(b) on any airplane where instruction is given for hire. Up to ten hours of overrun is permitted solely to reach the place of inspection, and those hours are then deducted from the following hundred.
The airplane and the fuel it burns, in a single-engine type, for students already enrolled in a program. It does not include the instructor, whose time sits inside the program price. It is the only hourly figure published anywhere on this site and it is not a rental rate offered to the public.
Because neither is sold by the hour. The Seminole is bought as the $5,100 rating and the Cirrus is flown inside Premium at $22,500. An hourly figure for either would describe a transaction nobody here is offering.
On the Standard and the Comprehensive it is a Piper Warrior, a Diamond DA20 or a Cessna 162 Skycatcher. Premium students fly the Cirrus SR22 Turbo from the first hour. Which of the three you fly depends on availability and on what your instructor judges suits you, and you can ask to change.
The Piper Arrow II covers the complex or technically advanced requirement inside commercial training. Ten hours of such training is asked of a commercial applicant by 14 CFR 61.129(a)(3)(ii), and retractable gear with a controllable-pitch propeller remains the traditional way to meet it.
This site does not advertise aircraft hire and publishes no rate card for it. What is sold here is training. If you are already enrolled and want to add flying outside the syllabus, the $179 single-engine wet figure is the number that applies.
No. Six types, all nosewheel, none certificated for aerobatics. If you want a tailwheel endorsement or upset recovery training you will need to go elsewhere for it, and it is better to know that before you enrol than to discover it two phases in.
You are moved to another airframe of the same class where one is available, which is one of the practical reasons for owning several of a type rather than one of each. Where nothing suitable is free, the lesson is rescheduled. A simulator session is sometimes the better substitute and sometimes not, and your instructor should say which.
No, and we would be suspicious of a new school that did. A short clean period is a statement about how little time has passed, not about how an operation is run. What is published instead is the inspection regime that 14 CFR 91.409 requires and the fact that the aircraft are owned outright.
The rest of the school
A ramp is easier to judge in person than in a photograph
Book an hour, fly the airplane you would actually be trained in, and look at the rest of them on the way back to the office. An hour on the ramp tells you more about a school than any page can.
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 →