Training Rates

With our straight forward pay as you fly training program you will never be asked to deposit any money into an account (See below for the reasons why) or to pay before your flight. This honest and fair approach to training allows us to offer the best overall training rates in California!
All of our rates include your Certified Flight Instructor for Dual Training and the Helicopter Wet (all the fuel that is required for that flight).
We don’t have any hidden fees or fuel back charges (Meaning that some flight schools will only pay up to the cost of fuel at their airport, you pick up the difference if the fuel cost is more if you stop to get fuel somewhere else! (Funny how they never give you a credit if it costs less!). We do not cover airport landing fees, Which currently only affects Catalina Airport and Santa Monica Airport.
Since training is a service there is no sales tax.
Please note that you will be charged Dual Training rates for all of your Private Solo flights, and Dual Training rates for your first 3 hours of Commercial solo flying. The reason we charge at the Dual Training rate is because your Flight Instructor will be here to supervise your flight from start to finish. In our industry it’s called a Supervised Solo.
 reason we charge at the Dual Training rate is because your Flight Instructor will be here to supervise your flight from start to finish. In our industry it’s called a Supervised Solo.
The estimated cost to obtain a certificate or rating are based on the FAA minimum requirements.

Why we don’t accept advanced money into so called Block Rate accounts!

You pay at our low training rates only after you have flown or had ground instruction and you only pay for the actual time spent flying or in ground instruction, again there are no hidden charges. There are several reasons why we do not accept money into block rate accounts. Just about everyone has a bank and that is their purpose to manage and protect your money. We are a flight school and our purpose is to teach you to fly!
Here are some real-world examples of why we don’t have block rate accounts or accept advanced payments for our flight training.
I was involved with the largest helicopter training company in the US that went bankrupt, leaving myself and about 2100 other students, with a huge training bill for hours never flown, but long spent by the school.I have trained two students who both lost several thousand dollars when their previous flight school went out of business and they lost all of their money in a block rate account. These were well established flight schools that had been in business for years.
We have trained other students who felt they were getting sub-standard training at another school and did not want to continue training there. They could not get their money out of their block rate accounts unless they were ready to forfeit from 20% all the way to 100% for some schools. They had two choices, loose a percentage of their money, or continue to get their sub-standard training until they had flown their accounts to zero.
Our words of advice – Never give any flight school 100% of your money for training up front. Only deposit with them what you are willing to lose should something happen to the school.
California has passed a law AB-48 to try and protect student’s money from the above scenarios.

Full text of Assembly Bill 48 (AB-48) as signed

California Private Post-Secondary Education Act of 2009