LA Flight schools
 

Hello guys,

Anyone have a flight school to recommend near LA? I live in Glendale! :)

Are you starting flight training from the very beginning? If not, what are you looking to achieve?

Rather then go to a flight school light be worth finding someone who is established eg. A pilot not flying that much at the moment who is willing to teach you (assuming they are CFI1).

Thanks for your reply.
Yes start from the beginning.
Like have some private lessons with CFI?

As you are starting from the beginning, I would seriously advise you to get your written test out of the way before you start flying. This depends on if you are currently working and will do flight training in-between working. Do an online course such as fly8ma (there are many others out there, I used fly8ma and found the guys really helpful with questions). Buy the FAA flying handbook and start studying. Once you have the written out the way you can then focus on actual flying.

Don't forget your FAA medical certificate and student license. You can do all that now while you start studying.

Flying clubs and schools are there to make money. If you can find a pilot who will train you on the side you will likely save money and get better training.

Look for flight schools out of Whiteman , El Monte and Van Nuys airports

Finding an established flight school at Whiteman, El Monte or Van Nuys is best. An individual with an airplane is not the greatest idea. Having a good well maintained fleet of aircraft combined with well supervised full time fight instructors is worth the money. A good structured start in your flying career will pay off in the long run. By the way, I soloed out Whiteman in 1967, and retired as a 777 Captain in 2012.

What a sweeping statement, and how wrong. My instructor is currently a 737 Captain with one of the majors and has been flying for over a hundred years. He owns his own plane and teaches because he wants to, not because he has to. My last instructor was someone with 700 hrs and trying to "build hours". The difference in instruction is amazing.

Op, it is also worth noting; If you do go to a flight school, make sure you end up picking one that charges by logged flight time and not when you walk in the door. At the local flying club I went to, they charged for instructor time the moment you walk in the door. Currently, my instructor only charges per logged flight time.

In my experience, CFIs who do this rarely provide a thorough brief and debrief to the detriment of the student.

I spent years as a flight instructor and always charged for briefing and debriefing my students. And it was worth every penny. A good flight instructor should charge the student for instruction on the ground and flight.

That’s very fortunate of you to have an instructor who only charges for logged flight time and an individual CFI with a plane definitely isn’t a bad thing if the instructor is proper. Don’t expect that to be industry standard to only charge for logged time though and I definitely recommend to not think less of those who do charge. You have an instructor who is teaching ‘for the love of the game’ and not reliant on the income to put food on the table. Lucky you. Some students have a knack for turning a 2 hour lesson into 4 hours, so when you start chatting up an instructor at the local flying club before and after your lesson and see that they have a smile on their face, maybe (sometimes) they’re also wishing they had that time to prep for their next student, eat their lunch, use the restroom, etc while also trying to be polite and friendly because they want you to walk away with a positive experience.

Some instructors with 700 hours can be bad or amazing just as someone with 20,000 hours. Probably best not to assume hour-count or 737 experience directly correlates to who will transfer Cessna/Piper knowledge the best. When I went through training I had a fair mix of it all and can say sometimes it was the 700 hour instructor who knew how to relate to what I was learning since they just went through it or what retentive tricks certain DPEs pull on checkrides since they send so many students to that examiner. It sounds like right now you’re not learning to fly a 737, so anything less than a very experienced 737 instructor doesn’t directly correlate into a bad primary training instructor. Definitely a good person to know and keep in touch with, but I imagine one day you’ll come around to seeing how some days an instructor working a 12-hour day and only charging for the 2-3 hours logged hardly put gas in their car to get to work.