Aircraft Access
Our Aircraft Flies With Our Students
The school’s Cessna 172S is dedicated to training, which is what keeps lesson slots open for the students working towards a certificate. Solo flying happens inside your own training programme — here is how that works, and where to look if you are a rated pilot after rental hours.
From The Flight Line
The school as it flies — straight from its Instagram.
Three short answers, in the order people ask them.
Who Flies The Aeroplane
Every hour our Cessna 172S flies is an hour of training, flown by a student of the school or by one of our instructors. Keeping it that way is what lets us hold a regular weekly slot for each student instead of competing with a rental diary.
About the aircraftSolo Flying As A Student
Solo flight is part of your course. You fly the aircraft on your own once the solo is the next step in your syllabus, you hold the current endorsements the FAA requires, and your instructor has authorised that specific flight in writing.
That covers your first solo, solo practice in the local area, and the solo cross-countries a private certificate calls for — all planned with your instructor and flown on the school’s aircraft at the usual hourly rate.
Private pilot trainingIf You Already Hold A Certificate
Building time for a commercial certificate, meeting insurance minimums, or staying current is rental work rather than instruction, so it is best done through a rental operator. Call us anyway if it helps — we know the field, and we are glad to point you to where pilots around McClellan rent.
Where we are useful to a rated pilot is the next rating: an instrument rating, the commercial certificate, or CFI and CFII, all flown with an instructor beside you.
Instrument ratingWhat We Fly With You
Training At McClellan
Private pilot, instrument, commercial, CFI, CFII and multi-engine — flown with the same instructor, at $110 an hour all in.