Instrument Rating Course At Van Nuys AirportFlying On Instruments, In Weather
A fixed-price instrument rating at Van Nuys, $11,700, flown in the Warrior, Arrow II or DA20 with Redbird MCX time built into the course.
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
Phase Two: The Rating That Makes The Certificate Useful
$11,700, fixed. An instrument rating is the difference between a certificate that works on good days and one that works on most days, and on a career track it is not optional — it is the prerequisite the rest of the sequence is waiting on.
| Price | $11,700, fixed |
| Prerequisite | A private pilot certificate |
| Aircraft | Piper Warrior, Piper Arrow II or Diamond DA20 |
| Simulator | Redbird MCX time built into the course |
| Includes | Flight training to the practical test standard, one-to-one ground instruction, written-exam preparation, stage checks and checkride preparation |
| Aircraft rate inside the program | $179 an hour, wet, single-engine |
| Running total | $15,900 for the Comprehensive private program plus $11,700 here |
| Field | Van Nuys Airport (KVNY), Van Nuys, CA 91406 |
What The Rating Actually Teaches
Flying an airplane accurately by reference to instruments while somebody talks to you, and making decisions from a weather picture rather than from a window. Holds, precision and non-precision approaches, and cross-country flying inside the air traffic system rather than around it.
The Los Angeles basin is a good place to learn the system half of that. The airspace is dense, the clearances are real, and a student who can work a busy frequency here is not going to be intimidated anywhere else.
The Downside Of Learning Instruments In Southern California, Which Nobody Advertises
You will log very little actual instrument time. The same weather that gives Van Nuys 355 flyable training days a year — counted from NOAA ASOS records over the year ending 1 August 2026 — is weather that produces almost no cloud to fly inside. Most of your instrument time here is simulated, under a hood or in the Redbird MCX.
That is good for tempo and bad for experience, and it means a newly rated instrument pilot from this field should be conservative about their first real approach in cloud. We say so during the course rather than after it. The marine layer that sits over the basin on May and June mornings is the one reliable source of the real thing, and we schedule around it deliberately.
Where The Simulator Earns Its Place
An approach can be flown, stopped, repositioned and flown again in the Redbird MCX in the time a single attempt takes in the airplane. For procedure work and instrument scan, no part of the rating costs less to learn. It is poor for landings, which is why we do not use it for them.
Staying Current Afterwards
The rating does not maintain itself. Recent experience for carrying passengers, and for commanding an aircraft under instrument flight rules, is set out in 14 CFR 61.57, and an instrument rating that lapses is a rating you have to spend money to get back. Plan the currency flying into the year after the checkride, not into the month you notice.
Southern California gives you tempo and takes away actual instrument conditions. Both halves are true.
Facts Behind The Course
- We bought the airplanes rather than renting them from private owners, so the maintenance decisions are made here. 14 CFR 91.409(b) puts an airplane that gives instruction for hire on a 100-hour inspection interval, and that bill lands on us.
- There are eleven instructors, which is enough that a full schedule does not stall on one person's diary. Every one meets the same standard: CFI, commercial certificate or ATP, current medical.
- An enclosed, motion-based Redbird MCX, FAA-approved, is part of the operation rather than an add-on to it. Priced at $189 when booked by itself.
- 355 training days a year, taken from NOAA ASOS records at this field and judged against a stated minimum of 3,000 ft and 5 sm.
- No quote to request and no range to interpret. Program prices are fixed, published, and the same for everyone who walks in.
- Part 61, stated plainly. The curriculum, the prices and the hours are published; a pass rate and a graduate count are not, because there is no honest one to print yet.
Stated Plainly, Because The Name Invites The Question
We train under Part 61. There is no airline behind this school, no cadet program, no pathway agreement and no hiring relationship with any carrier.
No employment is promised or implied by anything on this page. We do not publish a pass rate, a placement figure or a graduate count, and we will not until there is a real one to publish.
Price, syllabus, hours and the applicable regulation: those are published, and they are what a decision should be made on.
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.