Your First Flight At The Controls

The $300 option covers two or three passengers on the same flight. One aeroplane, one instructor, one flight — you are just not doing it alone.

The seat next to the instructor goes to whoever is flying. Everyone else rides in the back with the same view and no responsibilities. Couples book it, parents book it for a kid who wants a witness, and friends book it because the story is better when someone else was there. Anyone who is not flying waits in the FBO customer lounge; nobody goes onto the ramp unescorted.

The Cessna 172S has four seats and the instructor occupies one of them, so a discovery flight carries up to three guests.

For an online booking we work to a guideline of 250 lb per guest and 450 lb for the group. It is a planning guideline rather than a promise of a seat: the pilot in command confirms it with a weight-and-balance calculation that accounts for fuel, baggage, temperature and everyone’s actual weight. Give us each person’s weight when you book — we ask every guest, we keep it confidential, and it is what lets us have the flight ready when you arrive. Baggage for a group is limited to about 10 lb in total and has to be secured.

Yes. That is the reason you are in the left seat rather than the back.

Training aeroplanes have two sets of controls — one in front of each front seat. Your instructor is a pilot flying with you, not a guide sitting behind you, and either set of controls can fly the aeroplane at any moment. So when they hand it over, nothing is being risked: they are a few inches from taking it back, and do exactly that if you get behind the aeroplane. Most people fly straight and level first, then try a turn, then do not want to give it back.

Take-off and landing stay with the instructor. Everything between them is negotiable.

Does the time count toward a pilot licence? If you take the student’s seat, get the briefing and fly the aircraft under the instructor’s supervision, your instructor can log the flight as dual received toward a certificate. A group sightseeing ride with no instructional content is not logged as training. Ask us to log it before the flight rather than after.

Five steps, and you pay only once we have confirmed the date.

• You ask for a date, by form or phone, and give us two or three windows that work.
• We hold the slot provisionally once we have looked at the aircraft, the instructor’s diary and the forecast.
• You pay by secure link within 24 hours — Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover through Stripe, plus ACH, Zelle and cash. No surcharge for paying by card.
• You get written confirmation, the cancellation policy, and a request for your preferred dates, how many people are flying, and each person’s weight.
• The office contacts you by the end of the next business day to fix the details.
• You get written confirmation by email and text with the date, the time, the address and how to find us.

A fair question, and it deserves specifics rather than reassurance. Every discovery flight is flown by an FAA-certificated flight instructor from the seat beside you, with a full set of controls in front of them — Denis Vyatkin and Sergio are both FAA-certificated flight instructors. You are flying with an instructor, not being handed an aeroplane.

The aircraft is inspected before you get in, and you watch it happen — that is the pre-flight walk-around. Every aircraft we fly 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 the pilot in command.

Weather cancels flights, and that is the system working. The instructor decides, not the customer and not an app. If the wind or visibility is not right for a first flight we move it, that reschedule is free, and sometimes the call can only be made on the morning.

Nothing aerobatic happens. No steep turns, no dives, no surprises. If it feels like too much at any point, say so and we turn back — that is a normal outcome and it costs you nothing extra.

Sacramento is a good place to learn to fly: the valley gives us clear, calm mornings for most of the year. Summer heat and winter tule fog are the two things that move flights here.

• Free to cancel or move up to 24 hours before your start time, by phone, text or email. A reschedule counts as agreed only once we have replied to confirm it.
• Cancel at least 24 hours ahead and you choose: a full refund to the original payment method, or a new date. Refunds usually land in 5–10 business days.
• Up to two reschedules per booking when you give us notice. After the second, the new date needs to be within 90 days. Illness and genuine emergencies we handle case by case.
• A no-show means not arriving, arriving more than 20 minutes late so the flight cannot safely be flown, or cancelling inside 24 hours. The first time we retain 50% of the reserved time; after that, up to 100%. We do not charge it where there is a documented emergency.
• If the weather stops us, or we cancel for instructor illness or maintenance, you choose a free reschedule or a full refund and get priority on the next slots — and it does not use up one of your reschedules.

Nothing is scheduled to happen. Nobody will push you to sign anything on the day.

If you want to fly again, training is bought by the hour: $110 an hour, the aircraft and your instructor together, with fuel and oil included. You buy it as you use it, with no membership, no deposit and no prepaid block sitting on our books. That is deliberate: the most common complaint people have about flight schools is money paid up front for training they never received.