Instruction
Take flight!
YOU are at the controls! Learn how airplanes fly from pre-flight to landing. Our quality instructors provide you with an accurate sense of what a flight program entails. Discover the freedom that a personal aircraft has to offer!
Private pilot
Discover the ease and safety of flying. Integrated ground and flight lessons. We will prepare you for your written, oral, and practical FAA exams.
Instrument rating
Put your head in the clouds! Most weather does not deter your trip. Our airplanes are all GPS equipped.
Commercial rating
Take your flying skills to the next level. The first step toward flying for hire. Hone your flying skills and broaden your aviation opportunities.
4-H member gets to fly
Submitted by: Alexis Aguirre, Santa Margarita 4-H Club
When I joined Cerro Alto's Aeronautics project, I didn't think I could actually pilot a Cessna 152! But that's just what I got to experience on February 26 at the SLO Regional Airport. Through the guidance of our project leader, Michelle Graceffa, I applied for, and received, a scholarship for a "Discovery Flight" from the SLO 99's, a local chapter of an International Women's Aviation Organization. With Michelle as the flight instructor, we communicated with Air Traffic Control Tower, taxied around, took-off, flew over Los Osos Valley to Los Osos, Morro Bay, Montana de Oro, Diablo Canyon, Avila Beach, and circled back to SLO where she did the landing! It was really cool to learn how to steer the plane on the ground with two rudder pedals, and in the air with the yoke, which is the wheel that controls the different kinds of flaps. I learned how to read the gauges on the instrument board like the Airspeed indicator, Gyroscopic compass, Artificial horizon and the Altimeter. I felt like a professional pilot wearing a headset with the big, cushioned mic pressed up close to my mouth through which Michelle and I communicated to each other and the tower.
After the 30-minute flight, we went to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) Tower. There I learned how the airways are monitored, how the ATC communicates with incoming and outgoing planes, and how they read their radar screens. It is quite the multi-tasking job (and one in which I'm now really interested!)
The discovery flight was such a fantastic opportunity and definitely heightened my interest in pursuing aviation in some form.
