Frequently Asked Questions

No. Most people who come to us have never touched the controls of a small aeroplane, and some have never been in one. Your first lesson assumes nothing: your instructor explains what’s happening as it happens, and you’ll be flying the aeroplane yourself at some point during it. Curiosity is the only thing you need to bring — everything else is what we teach.

Two ways. Book a discovery flight — one introductory flight with an instructor beside you, $200 for one passenger — and decide afterward whether you want to continue. Or call us at (279) 777-9570 and tell us what you’re after; we’ll explain how training works and what it costs before you spend anything. There’s no application, no enrollment, and nothing to sign up for.

Our minimum age for a discovery flight is 12, and a regular training programme normally starts at 14. The FAA sets the rest of the milestones: 16 to fly solo and 17 to hold a private pilot certificate. Anyone under 18 needs a consent form signed by a parent or legal guardian, and an adult has to be there for check-in and the briefing. For under-16s that adult stays at the airfield for the whole flight.

Not to fly with an instructor. You’ll need an FAA medical certificate before you fly solo, and a private pilot certificate requires at least a third-class medical, issued by an FAA-designated aviation medical examiner after a fairly ordinary physical. If you have a condition you’re worried about, sort the medical out early rather than after you’ve paid for lessons.

A government-issued photo ID — a driver’s licence, state ID or passport — is required for anyone 18 or over, and we check documents before escorting anyone into the controlled area. For a minor, bring a school ID or passport plus the accompanying adult’s ID and the signed consent form. Otherwise: comfortable clothes, closed-toe shoes and sunglasses. Bring water, especially in summer. Headsets are provided free of charge, though you are welcome to bring your own compatible one. Skip the heavy meal right before. Nothing to study in advance and no books to buy.

Yes — that is what a discovery flight is for. One flight, a published price, and no obligation afterwards: $200 for one passenger, $300 for two or three. There is no membership to join, no enrollment fee and no prepaid block of hours. If you decide to keep going, you pay lesson by lesson at $110 an hour, all in.

No. The FAA sets minimum ages — 16 to fly solo, 17 to hold a private pilot certificate — and no upper age limit at all. What has to be in order at any age is the medical certificate rather than the birthday, so if you have a condition you are unsure about, get the medical done before you spend anything on lessons. Starting at 35, 50 or 65 changes your schedule and your budget more than it changes your ability to learn, and a discovery flight is the cheapest way to find out how it feels before you commit to anything. The age rules and the whole training path are set out on our private pilot training page.

Across the industry, yes — only a minority of the people who start training end up holding a certificate. It is rarely about talent. The usual causes are money handed over in advance to a school that then controlled the pace, gaps between lessons long enough that you pay to relearn the last one, and instructors leaving mid-course for airline jobs. We charge lesson by lesson with nothing paid up front, and you keep the same instructor through to the certificate. The full list of reasons, and what we do about each of them, is on our flight lessons page.

It depends almost entirely on how often you fly. Students who fly two or three times a week finish considerably sooner than students who fly twice a month, because less of every lesson goes to re-learning the last one. Weather, medical paperwork, and your own calendar all move the date. We won’t quote you a finish date before we’ve flown with you — anyone who does is guessing. See private pilot training for the full path.

The FAA sets a minimum of 40 hours of flight time for a private pilot certificate, including set amounts of instruction and solo flying. In practice most people need more than the minimum, and that’s normal: what decides your checkride date — your final flight test with an FAA examiner — is readiness, not an hour count.

More often than most people expect, especially at the start. Flying weekly, or twice a week, keeps skills from fading between lessons; leave three weeks between flights and you’ll spend the first half of each one catching back up. That’s the single biggest reason training gets expensive. If your schedule is tight, longer sessions less often can work — ours run from one to six hours.

Under Part 61: the private pilot certificate, the instrument rating, the commercial certificate (CPL ASEL), the CFI and CFII, and multi-engine training and the MEI in the school’s Piper PA-44 Seminole — with ground instruction running alongside all of them. Rental hours for pilots who do not train with us are flown with other operators around the field; tell us what you need and we will point you to one.

Sessions run from one to six hours. A short one might be an hour in the traffic pattern practicing takeoffs and landings. A long one can hold a briefing, a cross-country flight to another airport, and a debrief in a single block. You book what fits your day — students driving in from farther out often prefer fewer, longer visits.

Whatever you want. Plenty of pilots stop there and fly for the pleasure of it: weekend trips, breakfast at another airport, taking family somewhere without an airline. The usual next step for people who want their flying to be useful in more than fair weather is the instrument rating, which we train in our IFR-equipped aircraft. After that comes the commercial certificate and the instructor ratings.

Every private pilot candidate passes an FAA knowledge test — a written exam on regulations, weather, navigation and how the aeroplane works — before the checkride. We support it two ways: a self-study online course from an outside provider (around $300, paid to them), and one-to-one ground instruction with your instructor. There are no scheduled group classes. Your instructor endorses you for the test once you have shown you are ready, not to free up a slot in the diary.

It is the rating that lets you fly in cloud and on a clearance, and it comes after the private certificate. You need a current medical and cross-country time as pilot in command, then instrument training to the aeronautical experience the FAA sets out in 14 CFR 61.65, a knowledge test and a checkride. The difficulty is workload rather than stick and rudder — precision, radio, and staying ahead of the aeroplane — and it is the rating where flying twice a week instead of twice a month makes the largest difference. We fly every hour of it in the aircraft rather than a simulator, at the same $110 an hour. Our instrument rating page goes through the requirements, the difficulty and the cost in detail.

Up to a point, and it is better to know where the point is. The ladder is the private pilot certificate, then the instrument rating, then the commercial certificate, then the instructor ratings — CFI and CFII — with multi-engine and the MEI flown in the school’s Piper PA-44 Seminole. All of that is taught here. One thing is not: the airline job at the end. Hour building is taught by nobody — it is rental flying, and we rent at $120 an hour wet after a checkout, subject to a training fleet having the aeroplane free. An airline transport pilot certificate generally requires 1,500 hours of flight time, which is why so many career-track pilots instruct on the way there. We are a two-instructor school, not a cadet programme with an airline attached. See commercial pilot training and CFI training.

Yes — you don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to train with us. Federal rules require non-citizen flight students to be cleared through a TSA security program before flight training begins, so there’s paperwork and a waiting period to plan around. Start with our page on training as an international student, then call us.

You create and manage the application yourself through the TSA’s Flight Training Security Program, pay the government fee and provide your documents; we register as your training provider and endorse the training request. Covered training cannot start before the approval is in place. Plan on three to six weeks — that is realistic, not guaranteed, and it is not within our control. We have taken non-citizen students through it before. See international students.

Yes — with Denis Vyatkin, who owns the school and speaks English and Russian. Russian-language instruction is available by appointment rather than on demand seven days a week. You can have your briefings, questions and debriefs in Russian while you learn radio phraseology and standard terminology in English, because English is what you will use in the air and with an FAA examiner.

You’ll need working English. The FAA requires the ability to read, speak, write, and understand English for a pilot certificate, and your checkride is conducted in it. What that doesn’t require is fluent small talk. If Russian is your first language, we teach in it, and the aviation English comes with the training rather than before it. Didn’t find your question? Call (279) 777-9570 or send us a message — we’d rather answer it than have you guess.