Flying Out Of Van Nuys Airport

Every You Fly LA discovery flight departs from Van Nuys Airport — KVNY on a chart, VNY on a boarding pass, and one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world by any measure you care to use. If you have only ever flown out of LAX or Burbank, the difference is worth understanding before you arrive, because the airport shapes your first hour more than the airplane does.

Where Van Nuys Sits In Los Angeles

Van Nuys occupies a rectangle of the San Fernando Valley bounded roughly by Sherman Way, Woodley and Balboa. The Sepulveda Basin sits immediately off the southern end of the field, the Santa Monica Mountains form the southern wall of the Valley about six miles further on, and beyond them is the coast. Downtown Los Angeles is roughly twenty miles to the south-east; Malibu is about fifteen miles south-west over the ridge.

That geography is the whole reason a discovery flight from here is a good one. Within ten minutes of takeoff you can be over the mountains looking at the ocean on one side and the entire Valley on the other. Within fifteen the Pacific fills the windshield. There is no long transit to somewhere worth looking at — the interesting part starts almost immediately.

What Class D Airspace Means For Your Flight

Class D means Van Nuys has a control tower, and from the moment the engine starts you are inside a system. Your instructor calls ground for taxi, ground gives you a runway and a route, the tower clears you for takeoff, and every aircraft on the field is doing the same thing on the same frequency. By the time you line up you will have heard a dozen other pilots do exactly what you are about to do.

People assume a busy towered field is a harder place to have a first flight. It is the opposite. The pattern here is disciplined because it has to be, everyone is talking, and the controllers deal with student pilots all day long. The radio work sounds like a foreign language for the first ten minutes and then it starts resolving into instructions, which is one of the more satisfying things that happens in your first hour.

The Class B Shelf Overhead

Above the Valley sits the Los Angeles Class B airspace — the protected volume around LAX, shaped like an upside-down wedding cake with layers that step outward and upward. The layers that overhang Van Nuys have floors you must stay beneath unless you have a specific clearance. On a discovery flight your instructor handles all of that, but you will see it happen: the altimeter stops climbing at a particular number for a particular reason, and that number is written on the chart.

It is a small piece of altitude discipline, and pilots who learn in Los Angeles absorb it in their first few hours rather than discovering it later.

The Two Runways And The Traffic

Van Nuys has two parallel runways running roughly north-south. The long one handles the business jets; the shorter parallel handles a great deal of the light aircraft traffic and the training pattern. On a normal weekday you will share the field with jets, helicopters, air ambulances, film and news aircraft, several flight schools and a steady stream of private singles.

The airport is genuinely famous for it. The mix is what makes Van Nuys interesting to watch from the ground and useful to fly from — you learn to slot into a real traffic flow rather than practising in an empty training area.

Why Weather At Van Nuys Is Better Than On The Coast

Van Nuys is roughly fifteen miles inland with a mountain ridge between it and the ocean, and that single fact does more for your booking than anything else about the field.

In late spring and early summer, a marine layer of low stratus pushes into the LA basin overnight and burns off through the morning. Coastal airports can sit under it until midday. Van Nuys, on the far side of the Santa Monica Mountains, often clears hours earlier — and on plenty of mornings never goes into it at all. If you are booking in June, an afternoon slot is the safest bet anywhere in Los Angeles, and Van Nuys gives you the best odds of an earlier one.

The rest of the year, the pattern reverses. Winter in Los Angeles is arguably the best flying season there is: cool dense air, exceptional visibility behind a front, and almost no marine layer. Autumn brings Santa Ana winds, which are worth respecting and are usually a morning-versus-afternoon decision rather than a cancel-the-day decision. Our full Weather And Cancellation Policy explains what happens when the weather does say no — the short version is that you do not pay.

What You Fly Over From Van Nuys

The Sepulveda Basin

Directly off the southern end of the field. From the ground it is a park with golf courses and a lake in it. From two thousand feet it is obviously a deliberate green hole in the middle of the Valley, engineered to flood so that everything downstream does not. It is usually the first thing that rearranges itself in people's heads.

The Santa Monica Mountains And Mulholland

The ridge between the Valley and the sea is startlingly thin once you can see both sides of it at the same time. People who have driven Mulholland for twenty years tend to go quiet at this point.

The Malibu Coastline

Fifteen minutes from the runway, the Pacific fills the windshield. On a sixty-minute flight you get there and turn around. On the ninety-minute Malibu Coast Discovery Flight For Two you have time to follow the shoreline, which is most of the argument for the longer slot.

Downtown, The Hollywood Hills And The Studios

On a clear day the downtown towers stand out of the haze with the San Gabriel Mountains behind them, and the sheer scale of the built-up area between is the thing nobody is ready for. Depending on routing you may also get the hillside sprawl on the south side of the Valley, the reservoirs tucked into the canyons, and studio backlots that turn out to be far bigger and far more industrial than television suggests. The Discovery Flight For Two Over Downtown Los Angeles is built around exactly this.

The Airport Itself

Worth a look on the way back in: two parallel runways, rows of business jets on the east side, helicopter operators, and the traffic pattern you have just been part of.

Getting To Van Nuys Airport

We are at 7900 Balboa Blvd, Van Nuys, CA 91406 , on the western side of the airport.

Give a satnav or a rideshare driver the street address, not "Van Nuys Airport". The field has several public gates spread over a mile of frontage and the passenger terminal on the eastern side is a different place entirely. The wrong gate usually means a locked fence and a fifteen-minute detour, which is a bad way to start a flight you have been looking forward to.

• From The 405: take the Sherman Way exit and head west about a mile and a half. Balboa is the major signalled intersection you cross.
• From The 101: exit at Balboa Blvd and drive north past Victory and Vanowen. You will run alongside the airfield fence; the numbered driveways along it belong to different tenants, so watch for ours.
• From The 118: come south on Balboa. It is a straight run down the western boundary of the field.
• By Metro: the Metro G Line busway crosses Balboa at the south end of the airport, and Van Nuys Metrolink station is a short ride away. Both work without a car.

Allow a little more time than the map says between four and seven on a weekday. The Valley's traffic is real, and arriving flustered fifteen minutes late is the one thing that genuinely takes the edge off a first flight. If you are running behind, call (818) 330-1318 — we will tell you honestly whether the slot still works.

Booking A Flight From Van Nuys

Every flight we sell departs from KVNY. All of them include the airplane, the fuel, your FAA-certificated instructor, headsets, the pre-flight briefing and the debrief.

Weight limits are 180 lb per person and 360 lb combined in the Piper Warrior, 200 lb and 400 lb combined in the Cirrus, and there is no limit at all in the simulator. If you are near a limit, one phone call sorts it out before you pay.

Want to know what happens once you are there? Read What To Expect On Your Discovery Flight, look at The Airplanes You'll Fly, or work through the Discovery Flight FAQ. Buying for somebody else? A You Fly LA gift card lets them pick their own date.