Your first hour flying it yourself.

A discovery flight is your first lesson in a small airplane, flown from the left seat with a certified flight instructor beside you. It is not a sightseeing ride and you are not a passenger. After the instructor handles the takeoff, you take the controls and fly the airplane yourself for most of the hour, including turns, climbs and descents. Some flight schools sell a discounted introductory ride as a marketing product, then start your training over from zero afterward. At Settle Aviation the discovery flight is simply lesson one. I log the time in your logbook as dual instruction received, and every minute of it counts toward the 40 hour FAA minimum for a private pilot certificate. If you decide flying is not for you, you have lost one hour and one hour of cost, and nothing else.

At Settle Aviation a discovery flight is billed like any other lesson: 75 dollars per hour for flight instruction, plus the airplane. The Van's RV-12 trainers used for discovery flights are 165 dollars an hour wet, which means fuel is included, so one hour in the air comes to 240 dollars. There is nothing billed for preflight or postflight, no packaged intro price, no deposit and no booking fee. You pay the same hourly rate every returning student pays, because it is the same lesson they are taking, and nothing about the price changes if you keep going. Every airplane in the fleet, with its panel and rate, is on the fleet page. Advertised intro rides are often short, flown with you as a passenger, and not logged as instruction. Compare the logged hour, not the headline price, and ask for the all in number before you agree to a date.

At Settle Aviation, yes, in full. The flight is logged in your logbook as dual instruction received in a single engine land airplane, signed by a certified flight instructor. That time counts toward the 40 hour minimum the FAA requires for a private pilot certificate under 14 CFR 61.109, and it counts no differently than your tenth or thirtieth lesson. This is not universal. Many discovery flights sold as promotional rides are flown under sightseeing rules with you as a passenger, and that time is not loggable as instruction. Before booking anywhere, ask one question: will this hour be logged as dual received and signed by the instructor. If the answer is no, you are buying a ride. If yes, you are buying your first hour of training at no premium whatsoever. Ask before you pay, not after.

Plan on about two hours at the airport for one hour in the air. You start on the ground, where I walk you around the airplane for the preflight inspection and explain what the controls do and what the flight will look like. Then you get in the left seat, which is the pilot seat, and put on a headset. I handle the radio and the takeoff. Once you are clear of the airport, you take the controls and fly, and you keep flying for most of the hour: level flight, turns, climbs, descents, and a look at the metroplex from a few thousand feet. I take the airplane back for the landing. Afterward you sit down, log the time, and we talk about what a realistic path to a certificate looks like for your schedule.

The FAA does not require a medical certificate for a discovery flight, because I am the pilot in command and hold the credentials for the flight. You do need proof of US citizenship before we fly. Before any flight training, federal TSA rules in 49 CFR 1552 require me to verify that you are a US citizen. That means a valid US passport, or a birth certificate plus a government issued photo ID, or a Certificate of Naturalization or Citizenship plus a photo ID. The medical comes before you fly solo, along with a free student pilot certificate, and I ask students to get it early, before they put real money into training, so they know they qualify. If you have a known medical condition you are worried about, mention it on the phone beforehand so we can talk it through honestly rather than after you have invested.

Usually not in the training airplanes. The Van's RV-12s, the Dynamic WT-9 and the SportCruiser are all two-seat airplanes, so the only seats are yours and mine, and that is the setup a discovery flight uses. If a spouse or friend wants to see what this is like, the best move is to bring them to the airport. They can walk around the airplane with us during the preflight, sit in the seat on the ground, and watch the takeoff and landing. A lot of business owners who want to learn to fly have a spouse who is quietly nervous about the whole idea, and the fastest way to settle that is to let them see how ordinary and deliberate the process is up close. Once you hold a certificate, the four-seat Tecnam twin is in the fleet too, but that is a multi-engine airplane for later, not a first-lesson option.

Most discovery flights depart from one of my two home fields north of Fort Worth: Hicks Airfield (T67) or Northwest Regional (52F) in Roanoke. You fly a modern two-seat Van's RV-12 with a Garmin glass panel from the left seat. Other fields around the metroplex are possible by arrangement, usually when you already have an airplane there. Instruction is priced identically everywhere and there is no travel surcharge for meeting you at your field. The airplane is 165 dollars an hour wet, fuel included, in any of the Rotax trainers, and every tail is on the fleet page. Tell me your zip code on the phone and I will tell you which field makes the most sense and what the hour will run there. Plan on about two hours at the airport for the one hour in the air, and bring proof of US citizenship, which TSA rules require before any flight training.