Aviation Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

2/2/2011 — What is a discover flight?

It’s an introductory flight. Plan to spend about an hour and a half with us. It’s a great opportunity for you to meet our instructors, our curriculum, and our airplanes. We’ll have you fill out a couple of forms, we’ll go over our curriculum for a few minutes, and then we’ll take you on a half hour flight. During the flight you will fly the airplane under your instructor’s supervision. You’ll get a brief lesson on how to fly the airplane straight and level, and then you’ll get to play with the controls to see how you like it (most people love it). After we land, we’ll talk a little about the flight and then we’ll schedule you for your next lesson. And the discover flight counts toward your pilot certificate! It’s that easy to get started.

How long can I expect each lesson to be?

You should schedule each lesson for two and a half hours. You’ll usually only be with your instructor for two hours, but we like to leave an extra half hour of time on the schedule for you. That way if there is anything that you have extra questions about, your instructor can be sure to give you the extra attention that you deserve. Of those two hours, you will probably spend about an hour and 15 minutes of that time in the air, and then you can expect to spend about twenty five minutes with your instructor doing your pre and post flight briefings. You can also expect to spend another twenty minutes doing your aircraft pre-flight.

What hours are you available to give lessons?

We make our schedule into your schedule. We have enough instructors and aircraft that we can be available for lessons 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

How frequently can I take lessons?

The more the better. If you stick to a consistent training schedule then you will find that your training times and expenses are very close to the minimums that we advertise. If, however, you do not prepare in advance for each lesson, or take lessons less than once a week, your training will cost you more. This is because you’ll end up spending a good part of each lesson re-acquiring the skills that you lost from the lesson before.

We have some students who even schedule two lessons per day. We would recommend scheduling your lessons as frequently as you can while still allowing yourself adequate time to prepare and study before each one.

When does ground school start?

Any time you want it to. One of the amazing benefits of training at a Cessna Pilot Center like Gulf Coast Aviation is that you will be training with our exclusive, multimedia, web-based instruction program. You will do most ground lessons on your own time and at your own pace. And because of the multimedia nature of the lessons, you’ll learn the material much better than you would with even the best Flight Instructor. Furthermore, you’ll save hundreds of dollars of ground school costs because you’ll arrive at each lesson already prepared.

Why is your Cessna Pilot Center Curriculum so much better than those at other flight schools?

You’ll learn faster because our program gives you a video preview of each lesson so that when you show up to your flight lesson you know exactly what is going on. You’ll spend less time being overwhelmed and more time practicing your skills than those at schools who do not use our program.

Furthermore, because the program is approved my both Cessna (the manufacturer of the aircraft you’ll be flying in) and King Schools the leading flight training company in the nation) you are guaranteed that you will receive the absolute best preparation that you can receive. You’ll finish our program a confident and safe pilot.