St. Charles Flying Service, Inc.

I have been flying with St. Charles Flying Service for the past 6 years. During this time I have had nothing but positive experiences. Throughout training and beyond, the entire staff has been incredibly helpful, kind, and knowledgeable. They take pride in what they do and go out of their way to make a difference the community in which they serve. I have and will continue to recommend St. Charles Flying Service to anybody looking into flying for the first time or trying to back into it after some time off. I really can’t praise this company enough!

It’s hard not to be enthusiastic about these guys. Mark is a very effective instructor and a great charter pilot. Dennis is a classic example of a guy you want to do business with.
Heartily recommended.

After going through many different CFIs across the USA, my good buddy recommended me to attend this flight school.
Danny, NIck and other positive-​minded staffs are very accommodating to my flying needs. Because of that, I earned my PPL there.
I came back again few years later to earn my additional ratings (high performance and complex) without any problems.
You can’t go wrong for attending the flight school there!

Love this place! I’ve been flying with St Charles Flying service for 22 years. Always a great experience.

I purchased a groupon for my boyfriend for Christmas, and he finally had an opportunity to use it today. The experience was awesome from beginning to end. The staff were expedient, kind, and helpful. My boyfriend’s in-​flight instructor was Derek, who apparently just made the experience even better. Burt, at the front desk, was also very kind and engaging. Highly highly recommend this company for a quick trip like we had today or for flight school. Overall super super experience!

I bought an Amazon Local Deal (like a Groupon) for it. I mentioned I would like to have my fiancé go up with me. This altered the initial time I scheduled it for because there wasn’t a 4-​seater available at the first time, but she didn’t have an issue with my request. When I got there, we didn’t have to wait too long, and Mark, my instructor, was very friendly and joked around a lot. The deal said 30 minutes of instruction and 30 of flying, but I think the instructions only took about 10 – 15 minutes. The explanation was overwhelming and confusing to me (probably due to a lack of knowledge I have in the science behind it, as well as a lot of info at once, and my nerves), but there’s not much I really HAD to remember, and he helped and directed me as needed, especially with taking off and landing. It was fun, and my fiancé (who had no prior interest in it) wants to do it again so he can fly it. Mark also told us about a flight they offer that goes over downtown St. Louis (the arch and Busch stadium); we’re definitely up for that in the future!

This was an excellent experience for me. I wasn’t sure what to expect but what I thought was going to happen was sitting in a room for 20 minutes or so talking about procedures and how the plane worked. What happened instead was we headed straight out to the airplane to learn the gauges and other instruments while in the plane. The plane itself reminded me of an old car (the plane was built in 1978) which I was immediately comfortable with even thought space as you might imagine is very tight for two people. Think smaller than a Miata.
Mark was my instructor and he did an excellent job of explaining everything and made it easy to fly the plane once we were in the air. I had a lot of fun although I was really concentrating to be sure I stayed pretty even. I would highly recommend trying them out.

My dad and his girlfriend had their flying lessons this weekend. They had a blast. Came back inside, windswept hair and sh*t-eating grins abound, beaming, «That was FUN!» and talking with their instructor about how to get their private license.
Before the appointment, my dad was able to sweet talk the man on the phone into letting them go up with one another for an extra $ 20 apiece. This was apparently to off-​set the price of the gas it would take to send up more weight. Why the guy on the phone couldn’t explain that to me, I don’t know. I guess they had an old man-​to-​old man connection, because when it was me, he wouldn’t hear me out. I guess if having a passenger is an important part of the experience to you, offer to pay for the gas.
I told my dad about how I went from 5 to 4 stars and he said, «Update your review with 5 stars! That experience wasn’t anything less than 5 stars!» However, I’m still going to stubbornly hang on to that star because of how much of a pain it was to work out allowing passengers.
But I would still definitely recommend.