Twice a week. That is the number that works for most people, and it is the single most important decision you make about your training. Three or four times a week is faster and finishes in a couple of months. Once a week works but takes roughly twice as long and costs more in total hours. Less than once a fortnight is where flight training goes to die, and we would rather tell you that now than after you have spent $6,000 learning it the expensive way.
Frequency, not talent and not the airplane, is what decides whether you finish in forty-five hours or eighty. This page explains the mechanism, puts real numbers on it, and covers what to do when life will only allow one lesson a week. It sits under our flight training FAQ, next to how long flight training takes.
What Frequency Actually Buys You
| Lessons Per Week | Typical Total Hours | Calendar Time | Revision Per Lesson |
|---|---|---|---|
| Four to five | 45 to 55 | Two to three months | Almost none |
| Three | 50 to 60 | Three to four months | A few minutes |
| Two | 55 to 70 | Four to eight months | Five to ten minutes |
| One | 65 to 85 | Nine to fourteen months | Fifteen to twenty minutes |
| Two a month | Unpredictable, often 90 plus | Frequently abandoned | A third of the lesson |
Why Gaps Cost So Much
Flying is a motor skill sitting on top of a set of procedures, and both decay. The motor skill is the sight picture in the landing flare, the feel of the rudder in a crosswind, the sense of when a turn is coordinated. The procedures are the checklist flows, the radio calls and the order in which you do things. Three or four days off leaves both essentially intact. Two weeks off leaves the procedures mostly intact and the motor skill noticeably rusty. A month off leaves your instructor teaching last month's lesson again.
That is where the gap between a forty-hour minimum and a seventy-hour reality comes from. It is not that infrequent students are worse pilots. It is that a fraction of every one of their lessons is spent buying back ground they already paid for.
The Money, Stated Plainly
Suppose frequency is the difference between finishing at sixty hours and finishing at seventy-five. If you are paying as you go, a dual hour in a Piper Warrior at Van Nuys is $269 for the airplane plus $110 for the instructor, which is $379. Fifteen extra hours is therefore about $5,685. That is more than half the price of our entire Private Pilot Standard course at $10,400.
Inside a fixed-price package the arithmetic is friendlier but the principle is the same: our Standard course includes 38 hours of aircraft time, and hours beyond your package are charged at the package rate of $179 for the airplane plus $110 for the instructor. Flying twice a week is, in the most literal sense, the cheapest way to learn to fly. The rest of the arithmetic is on flight school cost in Los Angeles.
Frequency Matters More In Some Phases Than Others
Before solo is when frequency matters most. Landings are the skill that takes the longest to build and decays the fastest, and every week between pattern lessons shows up directly in the number of hours before your instructor is willing to step out of the airplane. If you can only concentrate your flying into one intense period, make it this one.
The cross-country phase tolerates gaps better. The work is planning, navigation and decision making, much of it done on the ground, and a ten-day gap between two long flights is not the setback that a ten-day gap before solo is.
Checkride preparation tightens up again. In the final few weeks you want to be flying the test profile often enough that it becomes repeatable rather than lucky, and you want the FAA knowledge test already behind you. Our page on what to expect on a checkride covers how that phase is structured.
If You Can Only Fly Once A Week
Plenty of people can only fly once a week, and plenty of them finish. Four things make the difference.
Use the simulator as your second session. The Redbird MCX is $120 an hour inside a package and $200 retail, it is an FAA-approved advanced aviation training device, and an hour of procedures and radio work in it between flights keeps the perishable parts alive for a third of the cost of an airplane. Do your ground study on a schedule rather than in bursts, and sit the FAA knowledge test early, so your flying weeks are never held up by paperwork. Chair fly: sitting at home running the checklist and the traffic pattern out loud sounds ridiculous and works remarkably well. And protect the one slot you have as if it were a medical appointment, because a missed single weekly lesson is a fortnight's gap.
How To Protect The Slots
Book a recurring time rather than individual lessons. The students who finish are the ones who hold the same two slots every week; the students who call on Thursday hoping for something on Saturday are the ones who drift. Early morning is the most reliable time of day at Van Nuys: the air is smooth, the heat has not built and the marine layer often lifts by mid-morning. We fly from 9 AM to 9 PM seven days a week, so a slot before work is genuinely available. If weekends are your only option, book two a weekend so one weathered-out lesson does not cost you the week, and read what happens if the weather is bad for how those get rebooked.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Twice A Week Enough To Learn To Fly?
Yes, and it is the pattern most working adults use successfully. Expect four to eight months to a private pilot certificate and a total somewhere between fifty-five and seventy hours, against the forty-hour minimum in 14 CFR 61.109.
Can I Fly Every Day?
Yes. Four or five lessons a week finishes a private pilot certificate in about two to three months and usually at the lowest total hours. It suits career changers and people training full time, and it is how our accelerated and career programs are built.
What Happens If I Take A Month Off From Flight Training?
You will spend the first lesson back rebuilding rather than progressing, and longer if the break came before your first solo. It is recoverable and it is normal after a holiday or a busy period at work. What is not recoverable is a series of month-long breaks.
Does Simulator Time Count Between Lessons?
Toward your certificate, some of it does: up to twenty of the forty dual instrument hours and up to fifty hours toward a commercial certificate can be flown in our Redbird MCX. Toward keeping your skills alive between flights, all of it counts, which is the more useful point for a private pilot student.
What Is The Best Time Of Day For A Flying Lesson?
Early morning. The air is smoothest before the sun heats the Valley, traffic is lighter, and your own concentration is usually better. Summer afternoons bring heat, turbulence and high density altitude, all of which make learning harder than it needs to be.
Related Reading
- Flight training FAQ — forty answers for new students.
- How long flight training takes — the calendar version of this question.
- Part-time flight training — a schedule that survives a real job.
- Accelerated flight training — what flying five days a week demands.
- The full-motion simulator — the cheap second session.
- Flight school cost in Los Angeles — what extra hours really cost.
Build The Schedule First
Before you buy a course, work out honestly which two hours of which two days you can defend every week for the next six months. We will help. Call (818) 330-1318 any day from 9 AM to 9 PM, or book a free consultation and we will map a realistic rhythm against your actual week. A discovery flight is $229 for sixty minutes and is credited in full toward your course if you enroll within twenty-four hours. We are at 7900 Balboa Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91406.