Your First Hour
Start Here
Book A Discovery FlightYou Fly The Airplane. From $229.
Sixty minutes over Los Angeles from Van Nuys Airport, with an FAA-certificated instructor beside you.
Programs & Prices
Start Here
Book A ConsultationGo Professional
Book A ConsultationWork Out The Cost
Book A ConsultationFree In-Person Consultation
Come and see the hangar first. No aircraft, no pressure.
Read Before You Fly
Costs, Explained
Read The Flight LogGetting Started
Read The Flight LogThe Airline Route
Read The Flight LogPilot Guides
What it costs, how long it takes and every step to the airlines, explained plainly.
Twenty Airplanes
Aircraft
Fly The Cirrus SR22Simulator
Fly The Cirrus SR22Glass Cockpit. Parachute. Leather. From $499.
Fly the Cirrus SR22 Turbo on a discovery flight, or train in it as an upgrade on any aircraft hour.
The School
The School
Meet The InstructorsTwenty Airplanes. Seven Days A Week.
Train at Van Nuys Airport with FAA-certificated instructors, a full-motion simulator and our own fleet.
Book Online
Bring Someone Along
Discovery flights for one or two, gift certificates and a free consultation, with instant text and email confirmation.
Where Students Come From
San Fernando Valley
See All Service AreasWestside & Coast
See All Service Areas7900 Balboa Blvd, Main Terminal Unit 108
Van Nuys Airport, in the middle of the San Fernando Valley. Students drive in from across Los Angeles.
We fly beginner lessons over Simi Valley, northwest of Van Nuys, in the open air beyond the Santa Susana Mountains. It is not the prettiest airspace in Los Angeles and we picked it anyway. A first lesson needs room, a horizon you can trust and quiet airspace, and that is what sits on the far side of the ridge.
Our beginner flying lessons page covers the rest of the two hours. What follows is only about where the flying happens.
Van Nuys sits on the floor of the San Fernando Valley with two parallel runways, 16R/34L at 8,001 feet and 16L/34R at 4,000. Northwest of the field the Valley runs up into the Santa Susana Mountains, and on the far side of that ridge the ground opens out into Simi Valley.
That is the practice area. There is nothing famous down there, which is the point.
What a beginner needs out there is a landmark they cannot lose, and the Santa Susana ridge is one nobody loses.
Consider the other three directions. Burbank is eleven miles east of us and it is a Class C airport. Whiteman is six miles northeast with a traffic pattern of its own. South and southeast is the city, and over the whole of it sits the Los Angeles Class B shelf, with Van Nuys tucked underneath in Class D.
Northwest is the short way out of all that.
The second reason has nothing to do with traffic. Terrain makes a better reference than a city does. Put the ridge off your left wingtip and hold the nose on the far end of the valley, and a first-timer can do that on the first attempt. Ask the same person to track a boulevard they have driven for ten years and most of them cannot pick it out.
Van Nuys Airport · Los Angeles
Van Nuys (KVNY): Class D beneath the Burbank Class C, just north of the Los Angeles Class B, 300+ flyable days, the coast thirteen miles away.
KVNY · Class D Tower
Practice Area · Northwest Of KVNY
The two-hour first lesson is $349: half an hour on the ground, about seventy minutes in the air over the Simi Valley practice area, then a debrief.
Time, mostly. Nobody is sequencing you behind anybody. You can hold a heading for four minutes while you work out what the rudder is actually doing, then do it again badly, then a third time until it is not bad.
The other thing it buys is attention. On a first lesson you have roughly one thing's worth of spare attention. Anything spent on terrain, traffic or a radio call you were not expecting is attention not being spent on flying the airplane, and there is less to spend it on out here.
Which is also why we do not use a first lesson to show you the city. Los Angeles from the air is worth seeing and worth paying for. It is a poor classroom.
Straight and level comes first and it is harder than it reads. Holding an altitude and a heading at the same time is most of flying compressed into one exercise, and you will chase both of them for a minute or two before anything settles. Most people are surprised how small the corrections turn out to be.
Then climbs and descents. Power and pitch, then undo them, which is where you find out that the throttle and the yoke are one control with two handles.
Turns next. You will discover that the airplane does not turn with the yoke alone and that your feet have a job after all. Out here you can roll into a turn, get it wrong, roll out and go again without anybody minding.
A sightseeing route makes a thin first lesson, and the reason is simple. A scenic route is a route. It has to be flown past particular landmarks, through airspace other people also want, and the route ends up doing the thinking. You will have the controls for most of it and very little room to be wrong.
Over Simi there is nowhere in particular to be. The airplane can wander while you work out which hand does what, and the only cost is some altitude you then practice getting back.
Pick an airplane, or the simulator if you would rather start on the ground. The price on the card is the whole price, with nothing added at the desk.
Credited in full toward your training if you enroll within 24 hours.
Half an hour on the ground learning what the yoke, the pedals and the throttle do, then about seventy minutes in the air over Simi Valley with your instructor beside you.
Lesson Length
$349all-in · one student · 2 hours
One of you takes the lesson. The other rides along on the intercom.
The same two hours in the four-seat Piper Warrior, with somebody you know in the back. They sit in on the ground lesson, listen in the air and take the photographs.
Lesson Length
$449all-in · student and guest · 2 hours
A stick instead of a yoke, and a canopy you can see straight out of.
Lighter on the controls than the Cessna, and quicker to show you when your feet are lazy on the rudder. A good first lesson if you already think you want the certificate.
Lesson Length
$549all-in · one student · 2 hours
+ Luxury
Turbocharged, all glass, and fitted with a whole-airframe parachute.
Not the sensible first lesson, and most people do not start here. The ones who do usually know they will finish the certificate and want to begin in the airplane they will fly afterwards.
Lesson Length
$749all-in · one student · 2 hours
Weight limit 200 lb for the person flying. No guest seat on this lesson.
Or gift it →
An FAA-approved AATD, so the time is loggable.
The same two-hour lesson, flown in the full-motion Redbird MCX instead of an airplane. Book it if the weather looks unsettled, if you would rather start on the ground, or if $249 is the number that works.
Lesson Length
$249all-in · one student · 2 hours
No weight limit. You accept the weather and cancellation policy before you book.
Or gift it →The best view of the lesson is on the way back, and nobody charges for it. Coming back over the ridge, the whole San Fernando Valley opens under the nose with the field somewhere in the middle of it.
Van Nuys is one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world, and from out over the Valley it looks like it. Two parallel strips of concrete, with Sherman Way running under the field in a tunnel. Most people do not believe the tunnel until it is pointed out, and then they look for it on every flight afterwards.
We reschedule and you are not charged. Rescheduling is free up to 24 hours beforehand for any reason at all, weather or not, and our weather and cancellation policy sets it out. The $249 lesson in the Redbird MCX is the one option the weather cannot reach.
From July to September the smoothest air comes early, so take the 9 AM slot. In June, book an afternoon instead, because the marine layer is the problem in the mornings. Winter is the best flying season of the year here.
Your instructor handles it on a first lesson, and you hear all of it through the headset we lend you. Van Nuys is a Class D tower field, so every departure and arrival is talking to somebody. Part of what the practice area gives you is a stretch with a lot less of that.
Not on day one. Later in your training you start landing at other airports, and the near ones are genuinely near: Whiteman six miles northeast, Camarillo thirty-five miles west. Cross-country time is part of what 14 CFR 61.109 asks for before a private pilot checkride.
Two hours from $349, about seventy minutes of it flying, with the exercises done over Simi Valley. Lessons run 9 AM to 5 PM, seven days a week.
Tell us a little about you and we'll get you cleared for takeoff.
Thanks — we've received your request. A You Fly LA flight advisor will reach out shortly to get you started.
Back To The SiteTell us how to reach you and what you want to fly. We answer 7 days a week, 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM.
Message Received
Thanks — we have your details. Someone from You Fly LA will get back to you shortly, usually the same day.
Back To The Site
