What Happens On A Beginner Flying Lesson

Nine In The Morning On Balboa Boulevard

You park off Balboa and come into the Main Terminal, Unit 108, which is on the airport rather than across the road from it. If you crossed the Valley on Sherman Way, you have already driven under the field, through the tunnel that carries the road beneath it.

You brought a photo ID, closed-toe shoes and sunglasses, because that is the whole list. The headset is ours.

Your instructor may still be finishing the paperwork on the airplane you are about to fly. Nothing dramatic happens for a few minutes, and it is the last unhurried part of the morning.

Then your instructor comes out, shakes your hand and asks what you already know about airplanes. If the honest answer is nothing, say so. It decides where the next half hour starts, and it is the most useful thing you can tell them.

Half An Hour At The Table

You sit down with a model airplane, a whiteboard or a diagram, depending on who is teaching. The controls come first: the yoke, the rudder pedals and the throttle. Then how a wing makes lift, and why pulling back does not simply mean going up.

After that come the six basic instruments in front of the left seat, which in the Skycatcher are drawn on a glass screen rather than hung on dials. Airspeed, attitude, altitude, heading. You will stare at two of them for the next hour and largely ignore the rest.

The last ten minutes are the plan: where you are going, what you will fly and what your instructor will handle. Hearing the sequence once on the ground is the reason the flying does not feel like being thrown into it.

From The Ramp To The Run-Up

Half an hour in, you walk out to the airplane. Four things happen between here and the runway, always in this order.

Step 1 of 4

The Walk-Around With The Checklist

You are the one holding the checklist. Fuel in both tanks, checked by eye rather than by gauge. A fuel sample drained into a clear tester and held up to the light to look for water. Oil on the dipstick, then the tires, the brake lines, the pitot tube, and the control surfaces moved by hand to feel that nothing is binding.

Ten minutes, and for most people it is the ten minutes that proves this is a lesson. Nobody on a sightseeing ride drains fuel into a plastic cup.

Step 2 of 4

Getting In, Headset On

The Skycatcher is a two-seat high-wing airplane with a Garmin G300 glass panel and a hundred horsepower up front. You slide the seat until your feet reach the pedals with a bend left in your knee, and do up the belts.

The headset goes on and the cabin goes quiet. You can hear your instructor at conversational volume, and the tower too, which sounds fast and clipped until about the third transmission, when your ear catches up.

Step 3 of 4

Engine Start, By The Checklist

Your instructor reads the start checklist out, one line at a time. Starter, and the engine catches. It is louder through the airframe than through the headset.

Your instructor calls Ground, reads the taxi clearance back, and then hands you the rudder pedals.

Step 4 of 4

The Run-Up Checks

Steering with your feet is the first genuinely strange thing you do all day, and everyone oversteers for the first fifty feet. In the run-up area at Charlie you hold the brakes, bring the power up and work through the checks: magnetos, carburetor heat, instruments, controls free and correct.

Two minutes. You will run the same checks before every flight you ever make in this airplane.

The Takeoff

Then the tower clears you for takeoff. Van Nuys has two parallel runways, 16R at 8,001 feet and 16L at 4,000, and which one you get depends on the wind and the traffic.

Full power, and the airplane starts to roll. Part way down the runway the nose comes up, the rumble from the wheels stops, and the ground noise goes with it.

The airplane is flying, and Van Nuys drops away underneath you.

Your First Turn

Once the airplane is level, your instructor asks you for a turn to the right. You roll in a little aileron, add a touch of rudder on the same side, and the horizon tips.

What surprises people is what it does not feel like. There is no falling sensation and no sideways push, because a coordinated turn keeps your weight pressed straight down into the seat. Your inner ear has nothing to complain about. You watch the nose track around the horizon, and it feels like steering rather than tilting.

That is usually the moment somebody stops gripping the yoke.

Airwork Over Simi Valley

Out over Simi Valley and the Santa Susana Mountains, things go quiet and there is open air with room to be clumsy in. You climb and descend to a number your instructor gives you, hold a heading, and turn in both directions. Our guide to the Simi Valley practice area explains why we fly there.

We keep a first lesson to straight and level, climbs, descents and medium turns. That is plenty, and the time goes faster than you would believe.

Then your instructor takes the airplane for a moment, points out a landmark and gives it back. The test is whether you can find that landmark again on your own. You usually can.

The Way Back And The Logbook

The Valley comes back under the nose on the way home, the whole grid of it from Chatsworth across to the hills. Your instructor talks to the tower on the way in, and then it is the runway, the taxi back and the shutdown on our ramp.

Ten minutes at the table to finish. What you did well, what to work on, and your logbook opened and filled in: date, aircraft type, tail number, flight time and your instructor's signature. It is dual instruction received, and it counts toward the 40 hours that 14 CFR 61.109 sets for a private certificate.

Then you walk back out past the airplane you just flew, and somebody else gets in it.

Questions About Your First Lesson

Which Airplane Will Be On The Ramp For Me?

On the $349 lesson, a Cessna 162 Skycatcher or a Piper Warrior, depending on the schedule that morning. The Skycatchers are N60225, N7030B, N6039M, N179LC, N5208V and N52049. The Warriors are N3034Q and N6312C. Your logbook entry names the one you flew.

Can I Start With The Diamond Instead?

Yes, on the Diamond DA20 lesson for $549. It is N306EF or N308EF, a 125-horsepower low wing with a control stick instead of a yoke and a bubble canopy you can see straight out of. We think it is the better airplane to learn in and the less forgiving one, which is the same sentence twice.

Who Talks On The Radio?

Your instructor, for the whole flight. Van Nuys is Class D airspace with a control tower, sitting under the Los Angeles Class B shelf, so there is a clearance to get before you taxi and another before you take off. You can key the microphone later in training, once the phraseology has stopped sounding like a foreign language.

Is There A Weight Limit?

Yes. It is 180 lb per person in the Cessna 162 or the Piper Warrior, and 360 lb combined when a guest rides in the back of the Warrior on the $449 lesson. In the Diamond DA20 or the Cirrus SR22 Turbo it is 200 lb for the person flying. The simulator has no limit.

What If The Weather Says No?

Then you do not pay. The decision is made on the 9 AM weather call, and moving a lesson for any other reason is free up to 24 hours before it starts. The full wording is on our weather and cancellation policy page.

Can Someone Under 18 Book?

Yes, with a parent or guardian. The FAA lets a student fly solo at sixteen and hold a private certificate at seventeen.

Can I Come And See The Airplanes First?

Yes. The school is open from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, seven days a week, at 7900 Balboa Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91406. Come in before you book if you would rather see the airplanes than read about them.

Keep Reading

• Beginner flying lessons at Van Nuys Airport, with the five lessons, the prices and what is included.
• How long a beginner flying lesson is, with the two hours broken down and what goes in your logbook.
• Choosing your airplane for a first lesson: Cessna 162, Warrior, Diamond DA20 or Cirrus.
• The Simi Valley practice area, where the airwork on every lesson happens.
• Our full-motion flight simulator, the same lesson shape on a day the weather closes in.