(818) 399-9905 · Open 9 AM–9 PM, 7 Days a Week · ★★★★★ 4.9 · 500+ Reviews · Van Nuys Airport
Nearly a century of aviation history sits in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. From its 1928 opening as Metropolitan Airport, through wartime pilot training and Hollywood fame, to hundreds of thousands of operations a year today — Van Nuys Airport is the story of Los Angeles flight training itself.
Few airports anywhere have lived as many lives as KVNY. Here are the chapters that turned two dirt strips into a global general aviation capital:
On December 17, 1928 — twenty-five years to the day after the Wright brothers' first flight — Metropolitan Airport opened on 80 acres of Valley farmland. Barnstormers, air racers, and record-setters arrived almost immediately, and early Hollywood productions used its runways as a backdrop.
During World War II the U.S. Army Air Forces took over the field, expanding it dramatically and using it to train pilots and defend the West Coast. Thousands of aviators earned their wings over the Valley — a flight training legacy that never left.
The City of Los Angeles bought the field for one dollar in 1949, reopening it as San Fernando Valley Airport. In 1957 it took its modern name — Van Nuys Airport — just as the postwar general aviation boom filled its ramps with trainers and private aircraft.
Van Nuys became a fixture of film and television and a hub for business aviation. Its famous 16R "one six right" runway — celebrated in the 2005 documentary of the same name — became arguably the most storied strip of asphalt in general aviation.
KVNY now handles roughly 230,000 takeoffs and landings a year — consistently ranking among the busiest general aviation airports in the world — with corporate jets, medevac, news helicopters, and a thriving flight training community sharing its two parallel runways.
Van Nuys is not a sleepy training field — it is a working aviation city inside Los Angeles, and that scale is exactly what makes it special:
Hundreds of takeoffs and landings every day, from two-seat trainers to intercontinental business jets — all choreographed by one of the busiest control towers in general aviation.
Runway 16R/34L stretches over a mile and a half, long enough for heavy corporate jets — and generous enough to make every student landing a little less stressful.
Flight schools, maintenance shops, charter operators, and emergency services make KVNY a billion-dollar economic engine for the San Fernando Valley and greater Los Angeles.
An airport's character shapes the pilots it produces. Nearly a hundred years of continuous flight training at Van Nuys means the infrastructure, the instructors, and the air traffic culture here are built around teaching people to fly — and flying alongside real traffic from day one builds skills quiet airfields cannot.
Students at our school talk to the same tower controllers who sequence Gulfstreams, share the pattern with everything from vintage taildraggers to news helicopters, and fly the same "one six right" runway immortalized on film. That environment produces confident, professional radio work and traffic discipline from the first solo onward. Add Southern California's 300+ flyable days a year, and it is easy to see why aviators have trained here since 1928 — and why we are proud to continue that tradition at 7900 Balboa Blvd, on the field's east side.
Come be part of the next chapter: start with a discovery flight over Los Angeles, browse our flight lessons, or map your whole journey with our guide to becoming a pilot in California.
Take off from the runway that made general aviation famous. Discovery flights depart Van Nuys Airport seven days a week.
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Tour the school, meet your instructors, sit in the cockpit, and leave with a personal training plan and exact pricing. Your Discovery Flight fee is credited toward training when you enroll within 24 hours.
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