Luxury Discovery Flight For Two
An hour in the airplane the Premium program is built around
Our Premium Private Pilot program costs $22,500, and every one of its hours happens in the turbocharged Cirrus. This booking is how you sit in one before committing to that. $399 for the hour, with a companion seat.
| Price | $399 |
| Time booked | 60 minutes |
| Aircraft | Cirrus SR22 Turbo — turbocharged, glass flight deck, CAPS whole-airframe parachute |
| Who is flying | One of you, from the left seat |
| What is logged | Dual instruction received, for the person flying |
| Hourly rate | None published for this airframe. It is priced inside the Premium program. |
| Published weight limit | 200 lb per person, 400 lb combined |
| Field | Van Nuys Airport (KVNY), Van Nuys, CA 91406 |
What is different about flying this one
The panel is glass, so the information you need arrives already assembled instead of being read off six separate instruments and put together in your head. That sounds like an advantage and at hour one it partly is. It is also the reason we do not recommend starting a certificate in it.
The airframe carries a ballistic parachute for the whole aircraft, which is a genuine difference in the emergency options available to the pilot and not a marketing feature. It is turbocharged, which matters more on a hot Van Nuys afternoon at a density altitude behaving like 4,100 ft than it does on a cool morning.
Our position on learning in this airplane
Most people should not do their first forty hours here. A glass panel does some of the interpreting for you, and the habits that build in a simpler airplane — looking outside, holding an attitude, knowing where you are without being told — build faster when nothing is doing the work for you.
The Premium program at $22,500 exists because some people have a specific reason to train in this airframe: they already own one, they intend to, or the type is what their next step requires. That is a good reason. Wanting the nicer airplane is not, and we will tell you so.
What this booking is genuinely good for
Deciding between the $15,900 Comprehensive program and the $22,500 Premium one. Sixty minutes in the airframe settles that question in a way no amount of reading will, and it is a cheap way to answer an expensive question.
Fly it before you buy the program built around it. That is the entire point of this booking.
What stands behind the price
- 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.