American Aviation

I wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about the idea of flying a helicopter, but it was definitely the greatest adventure I’ve done so far.
This location hast great personal and the instructor was very kind and clear throughout the whole experience.
Recommend it 100%. !

I got my Private at American Aviation and feel like they set me on a great path for success. Their staff is great! Jonathan was my instructor and I flew with Brad sometimes as well. Both guys are amazing teachers but I don't think you could go wrong with any CFI there. The package deals they have are a good deal and they often have sales when you buy block time. I loved learning to fly at American Aviation and I wish I still lived in the area so I could get my instrument rating there as well. I highly recommend this school for anyone who ever wanted to learn to fly or earn more ratings!

In the summer of 2016 I decided to start taking flight lessons again after a 10 year break. I looked at several different schools around the area both at Manassas and at other airport in the area. After visiting a couple schools, checking out their aircraft and, meeting with instructors, I decided on American Aviation. I took my first flight with them in July 2016 in the Diamond DA-20 and it was quite a thrill to be flying again. I then made the decision to transition to the DA-40 as its larger, more complex and something I'd be more likely to take friends and family flying in.

At American Aviation I flew with 1 primary instructor and 3 others once or twice for checkups. My primary instructor was great. He always had me flying the plane and let me make mistakes within reason and then taught me how to correct them. All the flights were fun and prepared me well and by the time the checkride came, it was one of the easier flights I had.

All in all I highly recommend them and will be back for my instrument rating, once I've had a little bit of fun flying on my own first.

An extremely professional staff and cadre of instructors helped me complete my commercial syllabus. From my first interactions with them, they were willing to help me achieve my goals and work with me to ensure consistent progress.They have a diverse fleet of aircraft at competitive rates that allows for a well rounded training experience. KHEF is a great learning environment for towered operations.

I love this flight school because their instructors are very helpful and thorough with the information and training.

Customer focused flight school and genuinely interested in seeing you succeed. Can’t say enough good about the owners, Kevin and Ann. Conscientious, ethical and communicative, both with their staff and their customers. HEF is a good learning environment, not too busy but exposes you to ATC procedures. Also a veteran owned business (Kevin is a former Marine👍). Five enthusiastic stars.

I would have to echo other reviewers, this is not a good place to get your pilots license for a number of reasons. They don't seem to really prioritize students or student schedules. They seem to really cater to a specific group of students from a university who come in to learn to fly, everyone else is a second class citizen. They don't have enough airplanes and they don't manage the schedule well enough so that everyone can be able to fly when they need/ want to, and they don't prioritize needs. Seems like something is always broken in the airplane. If you aren't constantly on top of things with the staff, you will have a hard time graduating from this flight school.

Not well structured. Aircraft constantly in and out of maintenance. Student schedule is a mess and basically ran by the students. Difficulty getting on the schedule. When an A/C goes out of service and your scheduled good luck finding an opening to continue training. As A veteran I would advise finding another location. Instructor Staff I dealt with were super nice and knowledgeable but most have moved on to other places of employment.

It’s hard to take training from the airport. Lots of traffic. You may need wait on the ground or in the air, which is costly. And you need to spend 10 minutes to fly out of special flying rule area to take training, and spend 10 minutes to fly back to the airport. If you pay 1 hour of hobbs meter, you may only have 20 minutes for training. If you can have any other choice, don’t fly from this one. It’s costly.