Flight school prices in Los Angeles, published in full
Every program figure this school charges is on this page. There are no ranges, no block-rate arithmetic and no form standing between you and the number you will actually pay at enrolment.
Why does this school publish every price?
Because a price you cannot see is a price you cannot plan against, and this reader is making a capital decision rather than booking an experience.
Two of the nearest operators on this field publish no course prices at all. Our answer to that is not to point it out. It is simply to print everything, including the figures that make us look expensive next to a quoted hourly rate.
A published figure also disciplines us. Once a number is on a public page it cannot quietly drift upward between your first phone call and your enrolment paperwork, and it cannot be adjusted according to how keen you sounded. The number here is the number on the agreement.
There is a cost to this policy and it is worth naming. A fixed program price is set against a realistic number of hours, not the regulatory minimum, so a naturally quick student subsidises a slower one slightly. That is the trade you are making, and most people take it willingly in exchange for knowing the total.
What a published price cannot do is cover things we do not sell. Written test fees, examiner fees, your medical certificate, your headset and your charts are yours to arrange and yours to pay. We will tell you when each one lands in the sequence.
What does each program cost?
Nine figures, all of them the enrolment figure. Books and training materials sit inside every private pilot program.
Standard Private Pilot
Built to the regulatory floor. 40 hours logged.
- ✓38 hours single-engine
- ✓2 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓30 hours dual
- ✓3 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Comprehensive Private Pilot
60 hours logged, which is where most students actually finish.
- ✓55 hours single-engine
- ✓5 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓50 hours dual
- ✓10 hours ground
- ✓Books and materials included
Premium Private Pilot
Forty logged hours, all of them in the Cirrus SR22 Turbo.
- ✓40 hours in the Cirrus
- ✓2 hours Redbird MCX
- ✓30 hours dual
- ✓3 hours ground
- ✓Glass cockpit from lesson one
Instrument Rating
Phase 2, and the prerequisite the rest of the ladder is bolted to.
- ✓Built around 14 CFR 61.65(d)
- ✓Redbird MCX for scan and procedure
- ✓Flown in the Warrior or the Arrow II
Multi-Engine Add-On
The class rating, added to a private or a commercial certificate.
- ✓No hour floor at all in 14 CFR 61.63(c)
- ✓Flown in the Piper Seminole
- ✓Endorsement plus a practical test
Solo Certificate
For the student whose goal is a first solo rather than a certificate.
- ✓Sport or private track
- ✓Pre-solo training and endorsement
- ✓Credits toward a full program
Redbird MCX session
One standalone session in the full-motion simulator.
- ✓Full-motion, fully enclosed
- ✓Never scrubbed for weather
- ✓Procedures, scan and emergencies
Assessment flight
One hour of dual instruction, and the entry point to everything else.
- ✓You fly the aircraft
- ✓Written debrief
- ✓Refunded against a program within a day
Airline Career Track
No logbook to a commercial certificate and an instructor rating, as one price.
- ✓All five rungs
- ✓Financing from $2,500 down
- ✓Fixed at enrolment
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 lands; the Standard program is priced against the regulatory floor of 40, which very few people finish at.
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 |
| Books and materials | Included | Included | Included |
| 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 the first lesson |
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.
-
Phase 1
Private pilot certificate
$15,900Comprehensive program. Running total: $15,900. This is the phase where a first-class medical problem would surface, which is why we push you to get the medical done in month one.
-
Phase 2
Instrument rating
$11,700Running total: $27,600. 14 CFR 61.65(d) wants 50 hours of cross-country as the pilot flying before the checkride, so some of this phase is time-building you would have done anyway.
-
Phase 3
Commercial certificate
Inside the trackPriced inside the $89,000 program rather than sold separately, because the 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
$5,100Short, because 14 CFR 61.63(c) attaches no hour minimum to an added class rating. Flown in the Piper Seminole.
-
Phase 5
Flight instructor rating
Inside the trackThe 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 Airline Career Track is not simply the sum of the rungs, because the commercial and instructor phases are not sold on their own. Compare the two routes 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 our word for anything.
Airframes on our own books
Cessna 162 Skycatcher, Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II, Diamond DA20, Cirrus SR22 Turbo and Piper Seminole. We own them and we maintain them; none of them is chartered in for the afternoon from somebody else’s ramp.
Inspected under 14 CFR 91.409(b)Instructors on the roster
Every one of the eleven holds a commercial certificate or better, an instructor certificate on top of it, and a current medical. Your instructor signs as pilot in command on every flight, by law.
14 CFR 61.183 · 61.23One Redbird MCX session
Full-motion and fully enclosed, and the weather never scrubs it. Cheap place to learn a procedure, poor place to learn a landing, and we spend it accordingly.
Two hours inside Standard and Premium, five inside ComprehensiveTraining-capable days a year
Counted from NOAA ASOS reports at Van Nuys over the twelve months ending 1 August 2026. A day scored only when four daylight hours cleared 3,000 ft of ceiling and five statute miles of visibility.
NOAA ASOS via the Iowa Environmental MesonetFigures held back
None of them. Every program price appears above, with no ranges and no quote gate. What you enroll at is what is printed.
Published in fullHow do people pay for this?
The deposit that opens a plan is $2,500. Monthly payments run from there, through an outside aviation lender or in-house. Most students mix savings with a plan rather than settling a program outright.
The deposit
Financing opens at $2,500 down. That is the figure that gets a program started; the balance runs monthly against the plan you agree. We use an outside aviation lender alongside our own payment plans, and which one suits you depends far more on your credit profile than on anything we control.
One caution worth stating plainly. A monthly payment makes an $89,000 decision feel like a $700 decision, and it is not one. Read the flight training financing page before you sign anything, including the section on what happens if you stop training partway through.
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 we will tell you when it is coming.
- 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 additional hours beyond the program, billed at the published $179 wet single-engine rate
Where the money actually goes
Roughly speaking, the aircraft and its fuel are the largest single component of any program price, instruction is the second, and ground and materials are the remainder. That ordering is why tempo controls cost so tightly: hours are the unit that scales, and hours scale with how often you fly rather than with how long you have been enrolled.
Which leads to the position this school takes on every relevant page. Flying twice a month is the most expensive way to earn a certificate. It is also the most common.
What these prices do not buy
Airline Pilot Flight School operates under 14 CFR part 61 from Van Nuys Airport. We are not an airline and we are 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 belong to carriers, and a training provider that implies otherwise is selling something it cannot deliver.
We publish no pass rate and no graduate count. This business is new, has no record worth publishing, and will not invent one. The curriculum, the hours, the regulation behind each requirement and the price are what we put in public.
What people ask about the price list
The figure you enroll at is the figure on your agreement. 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 program here carries exactly one number, and the nine of them are printed above. If a figure is genuinely uncertain we say what governs it rather than printing a spread.
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. The twin and the Cirrus carry no published hourly figure at all.
Yes, in full. The assessment flight is $229 for the hour, logged as dual instruction. Enroll inside a day of flying it and the whole $229 is credited against whichever program you choose.
Yes for the private certificate, the instrument rating and the multi-engine class rating, which are sold individually. The commercial and instructor phases are priced inside the $89,000 Airline Career Track, because what they cost on their own depends entirely on what you already hold.
No. Block-rate discounting means the school is holding your money against future flying, and it makes the real price of a certificate impossible to compare between schools. The program prices above are what we sell.
No, when it is inside a program: two hours in Standard and Premium, five in Comprehensive. A standalone session outside a program is $189. Do not confuse those hours with ground school — the ground hours are 3, 10 and 3 respectively, and they are a different thing.
Financing opens at $2,500 down. Paying a program outright is also possible and some students do that for the private pilot phase and finance the rest.
The operation flies aircraft; this site sells training. There is no rental rate card on this site and no hourly rental advertised anywhere on it, because what this operation is built to do well is move somebody from no logbook to a working certificate on a schedule.
No program price is withheld. What we deliberately do not publish are third-party costs we neither set nor collect — examiner fees, knowledge test fees, medical examinations and equipment — because quoting somebody else’s figure as though it were ours is how a total quietly becomes wrong.
Read the page behind each number
The commercial hub links out
The airline pilot training program in fullWhat airline pilot training costsFlight training financingThe ratings these prices buy
Instrument ratingCommercial pilot licenseMulti-engine ratingCertified flight instructorFly 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 survives contact with an aeroplane. Enroll inside a day and that $229 is credited against your program in full.
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 →