Personal Attention and Instruction from an Excellent Teacher
American Air is not a high student volume “pilot factory”. All ground and flight instruction is given by Steve Shaner. Steve works with just a few students one-on-one. Steve will train you as an individual and will “custom tailor” your training to suit the unique way you learn best and at a pace that is ideal for you personally. Steve has been giving professional ground and flight instruction to men and women of all age groups for over 48 years and during the same time he served as an FAA-Designated Pilot Examiner for the Atlanta area flight schools for 32 years.
Modern, Well-Equipped and Well-Maintained Aircraft
Newer, well-equipped aircraft are much more expensive and the cost of maintaining these aircraft to the highest standard in the industry is also more expensive. While the rental rates for the aircraft we use are the highest in the area, they reflect how much safer these aircraft are when you fly them in training or on trips with your family or friends on board.
A Great Learning Environment
American Air is located at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (KPDK), northeast of Atlanta. As an active, tower-controlled airport with multiple runways, KPDK provides excellent training conditions for all types of pilots. Our flight training facility is one of the best in the Atlanta area. Comfortable, quiet training classrooms are provided and we have more state-of-the-art training aids than most flight schools across the country. American Air provides training in our Piper Archer LX with the G1000 NXi Glass Cockpit(Electronic Screen) airplanes equipped with comfortable leather seats and air conditioning. American Air also provides high-end, ultra-comfortable, electronic noise-cancelling headsets for flight training. Many of your flight lessons will be recorded on high-definition video and audio which will be provided to you on a flash drive for you to load into your home or office computer for your review.
Training and Testing Well Above the FAA Pilot Certification Standards
Steve has researched thousands of NTSB aviation accident reports and has created hundreds of new piloting techniques and procedures that are taught only at American Air. These procedures can be life-saving and this one of the many reasons why American graduates are some of the safest pilots by far. Steve will train and test you continuously to a much higher standard than that required by the FAA. This is one of the reasons why you will get much more enjoyment and satisfaction from your experience with American Air as you will know that you have made a great achievement and you have become an excellent pilot. You will have much more confidence and security in your flying. You will also enjoy the satisfaction in knowing you got the best value for the time and money you invested in your flight training.
Here are some of the many benefits you will enjoy when you learn to fly at American Air:
Most new production airplanes come with the digital electronic screens to display instrument indications. Most existing aircraft today are equipped with the older analog instruments with mechanical needle indications. Many older airplanes are now being retrofitted with new aftermarket digital glass panels. Most new glass cockpit airplanes are also equipped with some analog instruments as backups for their electronic screens. For these reasons, current flight students should be thoroughly trained on both types of instrument panels.
In the Private, Instrument, Commercial or Flight instructor courses at American Air, you will receive approximately 80% of you flight training in a Cessna 172S with glass cockpit and the other 20% in a Cessna 172 with the analog panel.
Upon completion of any of these courses, you will feel comfortable and competent with either type of instrument panel. The Cessna 172S is also equipped with XM weather display, traffic display and a fully-coupled autopilot.
You will enjoy flying our state-of-the-art simulator with full-functioning controls. The simulator can be configured for a large variety of aircraft types – both single engine and twin engine. The simulator enables the instructor to set weather conditions and navigation situations to focus training practice in specific areas as needed. The instructor can also replay your flight path on the console chart and make a print out for you to take home and study. The instructor can setup conditions such as gusty crosswind landings, turbulence, low clouds, reduced visibility, equipment failure and more. The simulator can be “frozen” in flight to ask questions or to have ground discussion on the procedure in progress. From the instructor console, your instructor can safely initiate aircraft malfunction scenarios that would be unsafe to perform in a real aircraft. This gives you great “hands-on” experience in a safe training environment. If you have a flight lesson scheduled and the weather is unsafe, you may be able to complete the lesson in the simulator.
Learning all of the complex functions of the switches and buttons in a glass cockpit airplane requires focus and repeated “hands on” practice. At American Air, you can do a lot of this practice in the Cessna 172S on the ground. We can plug in power to the airplane on the ramp and operate all of the cockpit systems. This makes the airplane a realistic simulator. You can operate all of the switches and buttons and see the proper instrument indications without having to fly the airplane or run the engine. You can comfortably focus on the cockpit procedures without distraction and at a significantly lower cost. You can take advantage of this valuable training opportunity anytime. This is a great use of time when the weather is down.
Our aircraft are equipped with the latest video recording equipment to provide an audio and video recording of your flights in High Definition. After a flight lesson, your instructor can go over your flight performance with helpful suggestions on improving your skills. You will also get a flash drive copy to take home and review. This is an excellent training aid that is fun to use.
Students can use an iPad in any of our aircraft and display geo-referenced moving maps with weather overlays and weather text reports. This greatly enhances safety and situational awareness.
The common method of providing the required flight training on short and soft field takeoffs and landings is to practice on a longer, paved runway and pretend it is short and soft. At American Air, you will also get to train at an actual short grass runway airport to get valuable real life experience. Most schools do not provide this opportunity. Even if you do not plan to use this type of airport, you might have to land at one in an emergency. If an emergency forces you to land at one of these locations, you want to have the confidence in knowing you have the experience and skill to do it right. All of our students have also found this to be a lot of fun!
