The Cover Feature · Southern California
Learn to fly,
where the weather lets you.
Two Inland Empire airports, one academy, 280 plus flying days a year, and an FAA curriculum that takes a student from a first discovery flight to the airline transport pilot certificate. A field report.
Cover photograph. Cross-country dual instruction, Southern California, 2025. Wing-strut GoPro, optional.
The Inland Empire keeps the calendar honest. Coastal Southern California flight schools spend their mornings hoping the marine layer lifts before the lesson is over. Twenty miles inland, the air is already clear and rising. Two airports, Riverside Municipal (KRAL) and Redlands Municipal (KREI), sit beneath some of the most varied training airspace on the continent. Class B in three directions, Class C immediately to the southeast, mountains over eleven thousand feet within sixty nautical miles, the Pacific within forty. Students who book consistently here finish on a calendar, not a guess.
NextGen Flying Academy runs FAA Part 61 at both fields and FAA Part 141 structured training at Riverside. Private through Airline Transport Pilot, multi-engine, the full CFI ladder, plus a California-specific high-altitude endorsement program at Redlands, twenty-five minutes by air from Big Bear City at 6,752 feet MSL. The fleet is straightforward and complete: Cessna 152, Cessna 172, Piper Warrior, Piper Cherokee Arrow, Beechcraft Duchess, Redbird simulator. The instructor bench is built around CFIs who teach because they want to, not because they need the next job.
Two hundred eighty plus VFR days a year. Your training calendar does not get held hostage by weather.
The Inland Empire advantage
