Flight School Prices In Los Angeles, Published In Full
Every program figure this school charges is on this page. No ranges, no block-rate arithmetic, and no form standing between you and the number you will actually sign for at enrolment.
Why Does This School Publish Every Price?
Because a price you cannot see is a price you cannot plan against, and the reader of this page is making a capital decision rather than booking an experience.
The policy is simply to print everything, including the figures that make a package look expensive beside a bare hourly rate. An hourly rate is not a price for a certificate. It is a price for one hour, quoted without saying how many of them you will need, and that is the whole trick.
Publishing also disciplines us. Once a number sits on a public page it cannot quietly drift upward between your first enquiry and your enrolment paperwork, and it cannot be adjusted according to how keen you sounded on the telephone. The figure here is the figure on the agreement.
There is a cost to the policy and it deserves naming. A fixed program price is set against a realistic hour count rather than the regulatory floor, so a student who finishes quickly subsidises a slower one slightly. That is the trade, and most people take it willingly in exchange for knowing the total before they start.
What a published price cannot cover is the things this school does not sell. Knowledge test fees, examiner fees, your medical examination, your headset and your charts are yours to arrange and yours to pay. None of them is priced anywhere on this site, because quoting somebody else's figure as though it were ours is how a total quietly becomes wrong. What we will do is tell you when each one lands in the sequence.
Which Private Pilot Program Should You Buy?
Comprehensive, unless you have a reason not to. It is priced against 60 logged hours, and 60 is roughly where an ordinary student on an ordinary schedule arrives. Standard is priced against the regulatory floor of 40, and very few people finish in 40.
Standard Private Pilot
Built to the aeronautical experience minimum in 14 CFR 61.109(a). Right for a student who can fly most days of the week.
- ✓40 hours logged
- ✓38 hours single-engine
- ✓2 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓30 hours dual
- ✓3 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Comprehensive Private Pilot
Sixty hours in the logbook, five of them in the simulator, and ten hours of ground instruction instead of three.
- ✓60 hours logged
- ✓55 hours single-engine
- ✓5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓50 hours dual
- ✓10 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Premium Private Pilot
Forty hours logged, every one of them in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo, on a glass panel from the first lesson.
- ✓40 hours in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo
- ✓2 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓30 hours dual
- ✓3 hours ground
- ✓Glass primary flight display throughout
- ✓Books and materials included
What Does Everything Else Cost?
Six more published figures. Each one is a course rather than a block of hours, and each is fixed on the day you enroll in it.
Instrument Rating
The rung the rest of the ladder bolts to, and the one that changes how you fly more than any other single step.
- ✓Built around 14 CFR 61.65(d)
- ✓50 hours cross-country as the pilot flying
- ✓40 hours of instrument time
- ✓Redbird MCX for scan and procedures
- ✓Flown in the Warrior or the Arrow II
Multi-Engine Add-On
A class rating added to a private or a commercial certificate, flown in the Piper Seminole.
- ✓No hour floor at all in 14 CFR 61.63(c)
- ✓Endorsement plus a practical test
- ✓Ten to fifteen hours is typical
- ✓Private or commercial add-on
Sport Pilot License
A real certificate with narrower privileges, written into 14 CFR 61.315, and the shortest route to flying yourself.
- ✓Privileges set by 14 CFR 61.315
- ✓No FAA medical for daytime flying
- ✓Night flying needs training and a medical or BasicMed
- ✓Endorsements under 14 CFR 61.321
Solo Certificate
For the student whose goal is the first circuit flown alone rather than a full certificate.
- ✓Sport or private track
- ✓Pre-solo training and the endorsement
- ✓Student pilot certificate and a medical required first
- ✓Credits toward a full program
Teens Program
Ages 10 to 15, on the same syllabus at a slower tempo, years before it is legal to fly solo.
- ✓Ages 10 to 15
- ✓The same syllabus, unhurried
- ✓Builds toward a solo at sixteen
- ✓Books and materials included
Redbird MCX Session
One standalone session in the full-motion simulator, bought outside a program.
- ✓Full-motion and fully enclosed
- ✓Weather never scrubs it
- ✓Procedures, scan and emergencies
- ✓Two or five sessions sit inside the programs
What Actually Drives The Cost Of A Certificate?
Hours, and almost nothing else. The aircraft and its fuel are the largest single component of any program price, instruction is the second, and ground work and materials are the remainder. Hours are the unit that scales, and hours scale with how often you fly rather than with how long you have been enrolled.
Which is why tempo governs the total so tightly. Fly four times a week and skills compound; fly twice a month and each lesson opens with twenty minutes of recovering what the last one taught you. That recovery is not free, it is billed, and over a private course it is the difference between finishing near 45 hours and finishing past 70.
The second lever is preparation. A student who arrives having read the next lesson flies the lesson; a student who arrives cold pays for a briefing in the airplane at airplane prices. Ground instruction and the knowledge test are the cheapest hours in the whole enterprise and they are the ones people most often postpone.
The third is the medical, and it is a lever in only one direction. A deferral discovered at the point of first solo stops the syllabus while the FAA asks for records, and every week of that pause costs currency. Sit the examination before you enroll and that risk is priced at nothing instead of at several weeks.
How Do You Make The Total Smaller?
Four things, in descending order of how much they are worth. None of them is a discount, because there are no discounts here; all four are ways of needing fewer hours.
Raise The Tempo
This is worth more than the other three put together. Three or four flights a week rather than one keeps you current between lessons, so no part of a lesson is spent recovering ground. If your calendar cannot carry that, plan for the Comprehensive program rather than hoping to finish Standard at the minimum.
Pass The Knowledge Test Early
The written test for a private certificate is 60 questions in 2.0 hours with 70 to pass, per the FAA's own testing matrix. Take it in the first six weeks. A student who already holds the knowledge is a student whose flight lessons are about flying.
Use The Simulator Deliberately
Weather never cancels a Redbird MCX session, and it is the right room for procedures, instrument scan and emergencies. It is the wrong room for landings. Used properly it removes hours from the airplane; used as a substitute for flying it removes nothing.
Book Recurring Slots
Ask for the same two or three slots every week rather than negotiating each one. Students who hold standing slots fly appreciably more often than students who ask, and the whole of this list reduces to flying more often.
Every Course We Teach, In One View
Course prices are packages rather than hourly rates: the aircraft, its fuel, your instructor, the ground instruction and the simulator time all sit inside the figure. Van Nuys Airport, KVNY. Financing opens at $2,500 down. Read the financing routes →
The Assessment FlightSixty minutes of dual instruction with you flying, and a written read at the end. Credited in full against any course if you enroll within a day.
FROM$229
Book →
Nine courses, ordered by price. Every figure is the enrolment figure for the content that course states, none of them is a range, and none of them is withheld until you enquire. One Redbird MCX session bought on its own is $189. Examiner fees, knowledge test fees, your medical examination and your own equipment are set by other people and priced nowhere on this site.
How Do The Three Private Pilot Programs Compare?
The same three figures, laid out against each other. The differences are hours and airframe rather than quality of instruction, and the row that decides it for most people is the hours one.
The Three Programs, Line By Line
| Standard | Comprehensive | Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $10,900 | $15,900 | $22,500 |
| Hours logged | 40 | 60 | 40 |
| Single-engine hours | 38 | 55 | 40, in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo |
| Redbird MCX hours | 2 | 5 | 2 |
| Dual hours | 30 | 50 | 30 |
| Ground hours | 3 | 10 | 3 |
| Panel | Round instruments | Round instruments | Glass primary flight display |
| Books and materials | Included | Included | Included |
| Priced against | The regulatory floor | Where students actually finish | Airframe, not hours |
| Best suited to | A student flying most days who expects to finish near the minimum | Almost everyone | A student who wants glass and turbo from lesson one |
What Does Fixed At Enrolment Actually Mean?
It means the figure attached to a program on the day you enroll is the figure for the content that program states, and that nothing is recalculated when you move from one phase to the next. It is not an estimate, it is not indexed to fuel, and it does not rise because you took longer than expected inside the stated content.
It does not mean the total you spend cannot change. If you need hours beyond the program, those bill separately, and additional flying is charged at the published $179 wet single-engine rate. That is the honest boundary of the promise and it is stated here rather than in a footnote on an agreement.
That boundary is the whole reason the Comprehensive program exists at $15,900. It is priced against 60 logged hours instead of 40, so the most common way a fixed price stops being fixed — running past the content — is much less likely to happen to you. Paying $5,000 more at the start to avoid an open-ended tail at the end is a trade most students should take.
What additional instruction costs, as opposed to additional flying, is not published on this site. Rather than invent a figure, the gap is named here and on the terms and refunds page. Ask for it in writing before you enroll, and put the same question to every school you are comparing.
What Is The Running Total If You Buy One Rating At A Time?
The same numbers arranged as a career ladder rather than a catalogue. This is the view that answers the question people actually have.
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Phase 1
Private Pilot Certificate
$15,900Source: 14 CFR 61.109(a)Comprehensive program. Running total: $15,900. This is the phase in which a medical problem would surface, which is the whole argument for sitting the examination in month one rather than month six.
-
Phase 2
Instrument Rating
$11,700Source: 14 CFR 61.65(d)Running total: $27,600. 14 CFR 61.65(d) wants 50 hours of cross-country as the pilot flying before the practical test, so part of this phase is time-building you would have done anyway.
-
Phase 3
Commercial Certificate
Inside The RouteSource: 14 CFR 61.129(a)Priced inside the $89,000 program rather than sold separately, because the 250-hour requirement in 14 CFR 61.129(a) makes a standalone figure meaningless without knowing what you already hold.
-
Phase 4
Multi-Engine Class Rating
$5,100Source: 14 CFR 61.63(c)Short, because 14 CFR 61.63(c) attaches no hour minimum to an added class rating, so the phase is short: an endorsement, a practical test, and usually somewhere between ten and fifteen hours flown in the Seminole.
-
Phase 5
Flight Instructor Rating
Inside The RouteSource: 14 CFR 61.183The rung that turns the spending around. 14 CFR 61.183 sets the eligibility, and instructing is how most people accumulate flight time in the gap between a commercial certificate and an airline transport pilot certificate.
Buying the whole sequence as the $89,000 route is not simply the sum of the rungs, because the commercial and instructor phases are not sold on their own. The two routes are compared properly on the airline pilot training cost page.
What Are You Actually Buying At These Prices?
Five things, each checkable by a stranger without taking anybody's word for it. We opened recently and have no reviews of our own; this is the substitute.
Airframes On Our Own Books
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. Owned and maintained by the operation, so the inspection calendar belongs to the same people as the schedule.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors On The Roster
Each of the eleven holds a commercial certificate or an ATP, an instructor certificate on top of it, and a medical in date. Your instructor signs as pilot in command on every flight, because the regulation requires it.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23One Redbird MCX Session
Full-motion, fully enclosed, and weather never scrubs it. A cheap place to learn a procedure and a poor place to learn a landing, and the hours are spent accordingly.
Two sessions inside Standard and Premium, five inside ComprehensiveTraining-Capable Days A Year
Counted from NOAA ASOS observations at Van Nuys across the twelve months ending 1 August 2026, admitting a day only where four daylight hours cleared a 3,000 ft ceiling and five statute miles of visibility.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetFigures Held Back
None of them. Every course price appears on this page, with no spreads and no quote gate. Whatever you enroll at, you read it on this page first.
Published in fullHow Do People Actually Pay For This?
The deposit that opens an arrangement is $2,500. Monthly payments run from there, through an outside aviation lender or through an in-house plan. Most students mix savings with a plan rather than settling a program outright.
The Deposit And The Plan
Financing opens at $2,500 down. That figure gets a program started; the balance runs monthly against the plan you agree. We work with an outside aviation lender alongside our own payment plans, and which of the two suits you depends far more on your credit profile than on anything this school controls.
One caution worth stating plainly. A monthly payment makes an $89,000 decision feel like a several-hundred-dollar decision, and it is not one. Read the flight training financing page before signing anything, including the part about what happens if you stop training partway through.
- From $2,500 down
- Outside aviation lender or in-house plan
- Balance structured around the phases you fly
- Read the loan terms before the syllabus
What The Price Does Not Cover
The substance matters more than a budget line, so here is the substance without invented figures. Each of these lands at a predictable point in the sequence and you will be told when it is coming.
None of them is priced on this site, and that is deliberate rather than evasive. They belong to a testing centre, a designated pilot examiner, an aviation medical examiner and a retailer, and none of those four sets its price with reference to us.
- The FAA knowledge test for each certificate or rating, paid at the testing centre
- The designated pilot examiner's fee for each practical test
- Your medical certificate examination
- A headset, charts and any electronic flight bag subscription you choose to run
- Any hours beyond the program, billed at the published $179 wet single-engine rate
Paying A Phase At A Time
The private certificate, the instrument rating and the multi-engine class rating are sold individually at the figures above, so a student can complete one phase, stop cleanly, and return later without having committed to anything beyond it. Nothing here progresses automatically and nothing renews.
The commercial and instructor phases are the exception. They are priced inside the $89,000 route because what they cost on their own depends entirely on what you already hold and how many hours are already in your logbook when you begin them. A standalone figure for either would be a number with no content behind it.
Who Is The $4,200 Teens Program For?
A ten to fifteen year old who is serious, and a parent who understands that the certificate is years away. Nobody solos an airplane before sixteen and nobody holds a private pilot certificate before seventeen, so this program is not a shortcut. It is the same syllabus flown at a slower tempo, with the hours banked.
What it buys in practice is fluency. A fifteen year old who has been handling an airplane for two years arrives at the pre-solo stage already able to fly it, so the training that follows is about judgement and procedure rather than about coordination. That is a materially different starting point.
It is also, bluntly, the most common way a family discovers that a teenager likes the idea of flying more than the reality of it. That is worth $4,200 to find out at fourteen rather than at twenty-two with a loan attached, and an instructor here will say so in a debrief rather than encouraging another block of hours.
The mechanics are the same as any other program: a published figure, fixed at enrolment, with books and materials inside it. The medical and the student pilot certificate come later, at the point they are actually needed, and the medical page explains when that is.
What Sits Inside A Program Price?
Six things, on every private pilot program. If an item is not on this list it is not in the figure, and this site would rather say so here than in an email after you have paid.
The Aircraft And Its Fuel
Wet, for the stated hours, in the airframe the program names. The single largest component of any program figure, and the one that scales with how often you fly.
Your Instructor's Time In The Air
Dual instruction for the stated dual hours. This is paid out of the program price rather than out of the $179 hourly figure, which is a point people get wrong in both directions.
Ground Instruction
Three hours on Standard and Premium, ten on Comprehensive. Scheduled lessons rather than homework, and separate from the simulator hours.
Redbird MCX Time
Two sessions on Standard and Premium, five on Comprehensive. Full-motion, fully enclosed, and never taken away by weather.
Books And Training Materials
Inside every private pilot program. What is not inside is a headset, charts or an electronic flight bag subscription, and you should buy none of those before your third lesson.
A Figure That Does Not Move
Fixed on the day you enroll, for the content the program states, with no repricing at a phase boundary. Hours beyond the program bill at the published $179 wet single-engine rate.
What People Ask About The Price List
The figure you enroll at is the figure on your agreement, for the content the program states. What can change is the total you spend, if you need hours beyond the program; those bill at the published $179 wet single-engine rate. The Comprehensive program at $15,900 exists precisely to make that outcome unlikely, because it is priced against 60 logged hours rather than the regulatory 40.
Because a range is a way of not answering. Every course here carries exactly one number and the nine of them are on this page. Where a figure is genuinely uncertain, this site says what governs it rather than printing a spread and calling that a price.
The airplane and the fuel it burns, for a single-engine airframe, and only for students already enrolled. Instruction is paid for out of the program price. Neither the Piper Seminole nor the Cirrus SR22 Turbo carries a published hourly figure at all, and there is no rental rate card on this site.
Yes, in full. The assessment flight is $229 for sixty minutes, logged as dual received. Enroll inside a day of flying it and the entire $229 is credited against whichever program you choose, with no partial credit and no restriction on which one it lands against.
Yes for the private certificate, the instrument rating and the multi-engine class rating, which are sold individually at the figures on this page. The commercial and instructor phases are priced inside the $89,000 route, because what they cost on their own depends entirely on what you already hold when you begin them.
No. A block rate means the school is holding your money against flying you have not done, and it makes the real price of a certificate impossible to compare between schools. The course prices on this page are what is sold, and there is no arrangement available to somebody who asks well.
Not inside a program: two sessions on Standard and Premium, five on Comprehensive. One session bought on its own is $189. Do not confuse those with the ground hours, which are three, ten and three respectively and are an entirely different thing.
Financing opens at $2,500 down, with the balance structured around the phases you are flying. Settling a program outright is also possible, and some students pay for the private pilot phase and finance the rest of the route.
No, and there is no rental rate card on this site. The operation is built to move somebody from no logbook to a working certificate on a schedule, and selling airframe hours to walk-up renters is a different business that competes with that one for the same aircraft.
No course price is withheld. What is deliberately not published are third-party costs this school neither sets nor collects — examiner fees, knowledge test fees, medical examinations and equipment — and what additional instruction costs beyond a program, which is a genuine gap and is named as one rather than filled with an invented figure.
Because the forty hours are flown in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo, which is a materially more expensive airframe to operate than a Warrior or a DA20, and because the whole program is on a glass primary flight display from the first lesson. You are buying the airplane and the panel rather than extra time.
Whether an enrolled program carries a completion window, and what happens to unused credit across a long pause, has not been set yet and appears on the terms and refunds page as a marked open item rather than as invented text. Ask for it in writing before you pay.
What These Prices Do Not Buy
Airline Pilot Flight School operates under 14 CFR part 61 from Van Nuys Airport. It is not an airline and it is not owned by one. No cadet program, no pathway agreement, no conditional offer and no hiring relationship with any carrier exists here.
No figure on this page buys an interview, a job or a salary. Hiring minimums, seniority and pay are set by carriers, and a training provider that implies otherwise is selling something outside its control.
No pass rate and no graduate count is published. This business is new, has no record worth publishing, and will not invent one. What goes in public instead is the curriculum, the hours, the regulation behind each requirement, and the price.
Fly One Hour Before You Commit $89,000
An assessment flight is the cheapest test of the whole plan. You handle the controls for an hour, the instructor writes an honest read on what they saw, and you find out whether the schedule in your head is realistic. Enroll inside a day and that $229 is credited against your program in full.
Read The Page Behind Each Number
The Career Route
The Airline Pilot Training Program In FullWhat Airline Pilot Training CostsHow To Become An Airline PilotThe Ratings These Prices Buy
Instrument RatingCommercial Pilot LicenseMulti-Engine RatingCertified Flight InstructorPaying For It
Flight Training FinancingPilot Training LoansFixed Price Flight TrainingTerms And RefundsFly 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 →