About DIVA Flight School Sacramento

DIVA Flight School Sacramento is a flight school based at Sacramento McClellan Airport (KMCC), at 3028 Peacekeeper Way, Suite 110, in McClellan, on the north side of the Sacramento metro. We teach flying — nothing else. Our students range from people who have never been in a small aeroplane to pilots working toward the certificates they will fly professionally with.

We are a Part 61 school, not Part 141. In practice that means we build the training around you rather than around an approved course outline, which suits adults fitting flying around a job. It does not mean unstructured: we work from a written syllabus with lesson grades and stage reviews.

• A discovery flight — a short introductory flight where you sit up front and take the controls with an instructor beside you. $200 for one passenger, $300 for two or three.
• A private pilot certificate (PPL) — the licence that lets you fly a small aeroplane, carry friends and family, and go places. This is where most of our students are headed.
• An instrument rating — flying on instruments, in cloud and in weather that would keep a VFR pilot on the ground. Trained in our IFR-equipped aircraft.
• Commercial training — the commercial pilot certificate (CPL ASEL) and the instructor ratings CFI and CFII, flown single-engine in our Cessna 172S.

You pay by the hour, and there is one number to check. Flight education is $110 an hour — the aircraft and your instructor together, fuel and oil included — billed in tenths for the time you actually spend, in the air and on the ground. Nothing is added to it afterwards.

There is no enrollment fee, no membership to join, and no deposit before your first lesson. The rate card covers the aircraft and your instructor; the FAA medical, the knowledge test and the checkride examiner are paid directly to the people who provide them, and the pricing page lists what each one costs so you can budget for the whole certificate.

Paying as you go means you can pause for a month or change your pace whenever life asks you to, without a refund conversation.

We train at your pace. Some students fly twice a week and finish quickly; others fly twice a month around work and family. Flying more often does make training go faster and cost less overall, but the schedule is yours to set. Sessions run from one to six hours.

You get the same instructor, and a written record. You are assigned one primary instructor, with the second as backup, and changing instructor is free at any point. Ground instruction is one-to-one, a self-study online course, or both — scheduled around you rather than around a term timetable.

Every lesson is flown with an FAA-certificated flight instructor. Denis Vyatkin and Sergio are both FAA-certificated flight instructors.

The school owns its four aircraft. Each is maintained under the applicable FAA requirements, goes through 100-hour and annual inspections, and is not dispatched with an unresolved condition affecting airworthiness. The decision to release one belongs to the authorised mechanic and to the pilot in command.

A pre-flight inspection happens before every single flight, and you do it alongside your instructor from day one — not as a formality you are told about afterwards.

Whether a lesson flies is the instructor’s decision, made on the day. If we stand a lesson down for weather, you choose a free reschedule or a full refund, and it never counts against your allowance.

You do not need a background in aviation, a science degree, or perfect eyesight to start. Most of the people who walk in have none of the above.

• People who have never flown a small aeroplane. A discovery flight is the whole first step.
• Pilots flying for the fun of it — weekend trips to the coast, breakfast at another airport, taking your family somewhere without an airline.
• People building a career: the commercial certificate, then CFI and CFII.
• Students who are not U.S. citizens. There is a federal security process for non-citizen flight students, and we walk you through where it starts.
• Russian-speaking students.
• Someone buying a flight as a gift.
• Age: a discovery flight is open from 12. Training normally starts at 14; you can fly solo from 16 and hold a private certificate from 17. Under 18 needs a guardian’s signed consent, with an adult present at check-in — and for under-16s the adult stays at the airfield throughout.

If English is not your first language, you can have your briefings, your questions and your debriefs in Russian while you learn the standard radio phraseology and terminology in English — because that is what you will use in the air and on your FAA checkride.

It matters most in the parts of training that are easiest to lose in translation — weather decisions, emergency procedures, and what the examiner will ask you on the day.

Russian-language instruction is taught by Denis Vyatkin and is booked by appointment. Tell us when you enquire and we will build your schedule around their diary.

DIVA Flight School Sacramento is led by Denis Vyatkin, Pilot & Owner.

Denis is the school’s lead pilot and senior flight instructor as well as its owner, and oversees every certificate the school teaches — private pilot, commercial, instrument, CFI, CFII and multi-engine. Denis instructs in English and in Russian.

DIVA Flight School Sacramento has been teaching at Sacramento McClellan Airport since 2022, when Denis Vyatkin founded it. The idea was a small Part 61 school for adult students who want a consistent instructor, a manageable pace, and the option of learning in English or Russian.

That is still how it works: a consistent instructor from the first lesson to the checkride, a school-owned aircraft, and an owner who teaches most days.

We fly out of Sacramento McClellan Airport (KMCC) in McClellan Park — a former U.S. Air Force base on the north side of the metro that now works as a general aviation and business airport.

For a student, the field’s location is the practical part. McClellan Park sits closest to North Highlands, Antelope, Rio Linda, Elverta, Natomas, Citrus Heights, Carmichael and Arden-Arcade, and it is a straightforward drive from Roseville and Rocklin. If you live north of the American River, this is likely the nearest place you can learn to fly.

A few things worth knowing before you call, because people arrive here from all kinds of searches.

• Every flight is a lesson. You sit in the pilot’s seat with an instructor beside you — this is flight instruction rather than a sightseeing charter, and you fly the aeroplane.
• We prepare you for the FAA. The requirements and the examiners are the FAA’s; the regulations themselves live at faa.gov, and we teach you to work with them.
• Your timeline is yours. How quickly you finish depends on how often you fly, on the weather, and on you — so we plan around your schedule and review progress at every stage rather than quoting a finish date.
• The aircraft flies with our students. Solo time is part of your own training programme, so hour building outside a course runs through a rental operator instead — ask us and we will point you towards one.