Flight training at Long Beach Flying Club and Flight Academy

Rates are wet (fuel and insurance included) and are the cash price; credit-card pricing is a few dollars higher (a Cessna 172 is $150). Cross-country fuel is reimbursed up to $7.25/gal with receipts.

1. 1

   What do you charge per hour for flight instruction, and is ground instruction billed at the same rate?Missing from their site

   This is the number that is missing from the site. Ground is often billed separately and at a different rate.

2. 2

   Does the instructor rate change for the Instrument, Commercial, or CFI, or is it flat across everything?Missing from their site

   Plenty of schools charge more for advanced instruction. A flat rate quoted for the Private can climb later.

3. 3

   Is the club membership required to train, and what does it cost?

   The name says flying club and the site sells lessons and rentals together, so it is worth knowing which one you are joining.

4. 4

   Does the cash price apply if I pay by card for lessons, or only for rentals?

   Every published rate has a cash and a credit figure. Over 60 hours that spread is real money.

5. 5

   Do you offer block rates or prepay discounts, and what is the refund policy if I stop partway?

   Block discounts are common and rarely published. The refund terms matter more than the discount.

6. 6

   What do you charge for the written test, the checkride, and the examiner's fee?

   The DPE fee alone runs $800 to $1,200 in most of the country and is almost never in a quoted hourly rate.

7. 7

   How many trainers and how many full-time instructors do you have right now?

   Availability decides your pace, and pace decides your total more than the hourly rate does.

What to compare their answer against

Not Long Beach Flying Club's rates. The middle of what 60 California schools charge, to hold your phone quote against.

From the schools here that publish full rate cards, the same sample behind the Flight Training Cost Report. Long Beach Flying Club is not in it.

What we checked

Crawled 16 pages on August 4, 2026, including the pricing, Cessna, Piper, flight-academy, CFI-corner and student-resources pages. Every airplane is priced twice, cash and credit. The only other hourly figure on the site is a $18/hr flight simulator. No instruction rate anywhere.