Illinois Aviation Academy - West Chicago, Illinois

Eric P.

The oldest airfield in Illinois has a PSI examination center. I recently scheduled a retest for my Michigan Residential Builder License and was very impressed with the staff and facility after a bad experience at the PSI examination site in Grand Rapids. IAA is a great alternative to the unfriendly Michigan-based PSI examination centers, and the availability is fantastic! Only the Dearborn facility has comparable availability. It was a shorter drive to West Chicago from my location, so I scheduled at IAA and I am so glad that I did. It was an honor to pass my exam at this facility. I hope to return in the distant future for flight instruction. Highly recommended!! ✈️

Deven P.

Unbelievable. Amazing flight instructors, facilities, and aircraft. Just finished Aerocamp Advanced, and I don’t have enough words to describe the amount of dedication and hard work everyone puts in to ensure that each student’s experience here is great. Even though it’s a bit of a hike for me, this flight school passes my rating with flying colors (pun intended)!

Saranyan S.

Very good flight school to train at, Facilities are top-notch and the instructors are very knowledgeable. Everyone is willing to lend a helping hand and are very friendly. Special shout out to Matthew Lorenzen who I trained with. Matt was very patient and went the extra mile to help get to where I wanted.

The planes are mechanically very well maintained and the airport provides a very nice training environment (control tower, multiple runways and instrument approaches to practice). You can also take the FAA Knowledge tests in the flight school itself, which is also an added bonus.

The L. F.

Outstanding facility, the school is absolutely amazing. Flexible schedule, Great instructors, clean, and the ATC”s are very professional and highly skilled. They understand that they operate both with professional pilots and students. I highly recommend this Aviation Program!!

Chen R.

A great place to rent an airplane from. Friendly staff and well maintained aircrafts. Visiting Chicago I took the city skyline tour. Kudos to Michael Olson CFI who made it an unforgettable experience. This flight school will certainly be my first option on a future visit. Thank you ☺️

Sean L.

Great flight school with instructors and staff that CARE about the students. Easily one of the best flight schools in the Chicagoland area. Training here is easy and smooth, especially if you’re committed to being the best pilot you can be! My ground instructor Ethan Meisenburg was great and provides clear & effective instruction while being patient with flight students. CFIs Jay Patel, Jessica Vargas, and Andrew Bolles also offer high quality instruction! Lastly, the owner of the flight school brings high contagious energy which probably is why the flight school runs so well!

Tim L.

My son went to IAA to get his ppl before college. He had 7 months to do this. IAA assured me that was plenty of time to get it done. As we were nearing his college start date , he inquired how much he had left to get ppl , he was told he's not close. I found this strange , considering he had 40 hours of flight time. Then IAA tried to get us to jam everything into a week and half. The communication was terrible , they knew what we wanted , and so did his instructor , who left after his solo flight. To me , IAA was a bad investment , broken promises and a cash grab. We also asked for his flight records from IAA , which they finally sent to his college , after some phone calls. I wasn't the only person this happened to . My son knew another student there who was told the same thing. So when my son got to college , he pretty much had to start over , a big waste of money.

Darien S.

Posting this on behalf of my lovely gf bc she feels bad leaving a bad review but the payment was for 250 dollars for a discovery flight. This was a birthday gift to her, bc she’s thinking about doing a major career pivot into piloting, so she was promptly really excited to try.

The whole experience was for 1 hour. Total!! So the cost per time up there was not an amazing value to start, but anyway, the flight instructor( who shall remain nameless but it rhymes with scare-ed) proceeded to complain about the jobsite and some of the things that go into flight instructing, not explaining much about what he was doing while they were flying and ALL she wanted was to learn more about what goes into flying, different maneuvers, etc. All this, aswell as before taxiing, the fuel guy was late, wasting precious time where the minutes really matter for the price of the whole experience.

I’m sad bc now she doesn’t talk about flying in the same light with that excitement that she did before the flight and I can’t help but to hold this experience to blame for all this. At least they had the the respect for a partial refund for using less gas than anticipated, but it was only around a 4th of the cost.

In a word, the experience was underwhelming. And there expectations should be more clearly stated on the website. She enjoyed what she got to do, but there was just little of it.

And I would add a photo to this review if I could but THERE WAS NO TIME TO TAKE ONE. (Bc they were running late)