Discovery Flight Using A Redbird Full Motion Flight SimulatorRedbird MCX, One Session
A guided Redbird MCX session at Van Nuys: enclosed cockpit, motion base, $189, and never once cancelled for weather.
Pick Your Option
Cowlendar handles the calendar. Until the services are live this button places the booking through checkout and we confirm the slot by phone; either way you are booked and nothing is charged twice.
What The Number Buys
A Redbird MCX Session, Priced By The Session
$189 buys a guided session in the Redbird MCX: enclosed cockpit, motion base, FAA approval, an instructor next to you. It is not priced by the hour, and weather has never cancelled one.
| Price | $189 a session |
| Device | Redbird MCX — motion base, enclosed cockpit, FAA-approved |
| Instructor | Present throughout |
| Weather | Irrelevant. The device flies on days the airplanes do not. |
| Inside the programs | Two hours of it in Standard and Premium; 5 in Comprehensive |
| Field | Van Nuys Airport (KVNY), Van Nuys, CA 91406 |
What A Simulator Is Genuinely Good At
Procedures. Radio phraseology, checklist flows, instrument scan, holding patterns, approach setup, and emergencies you would never induce in an airplane on purpose. In the box you can freeze the scenario, reposition, and fly the same approach four times in the time one attempt would take in the air. Repetition at that price is the least expensive learning in the whole syllabus.
It is also where an engine failure gets practised at two hundred feet without anybody's heart rate becoming a safety factor.
What It Is Bad At, Which We Will Say Out Loud
Landings. The seat-of-the-pants cues that tell you the airplane is about to stop flying are the cues a simulator reproduces least well, and a student who learns to flare in a box learns something they will have to unlearn. We spend simulator time on scan, radio and procedure, and we go and fly the airplane for the rest.
Anyone selling you simulator time as a substitute for airplane time is selling you the cheaper product, not the better one.
Where The Session Fits
As a first exposure for somebody who wants to see the workload before spending money on a flight, it works and it costs $189. As a low-cost way to keep a procedure sharp between lessons, it works better. Standard and Premium programs carry 2 simulator hours and the Comprehensive carries 5, so the device is not an add-on to a program — it is part of one.
Simulator time is where a procedure costs least to learn, and where a landing is learned worst.
What We Can Show You On The Field
- Six airframes sit on this ramp and the school owns all six outright. Nothing is brokered in, nothing is on leaseback, and the shop that services them is ours.
- Eleven on the instructing roster. All of them fly on a commercial certificate or an ATP, all of them teach on a CFI, and none of them instruct on an expired medical.
- Procedure work happens in the Redbird MCX rather than in an airplane, because it is cheaper and because it can be stopped and rewound. $189 a session standalone.
- We counted the weather rather than guessing at it: 355 days here cleared 3,000 ft and 5 sm in the year to 1 August 2026, from NOAA ASOS records, and the method is published with its limitations.
- Published pricing, all of it, with no spreads. A program costs one number and that number is on its page.
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 →
Book It
One aircraft, one instructor, one slot on the schedule. Pick a time and we will confirm it.