Every Superior Flying Services lesson flies one of these, maintained to the same standard and flown from Richard I. Bong Airport.
172 Skyhawk Four Cessna 172s and one Piper Seneca III: a fleet you can earn a certificate in and then keep growing into. Students train across the whole line — the 160 HP VFR trainers for early lessons, the glass-panel and IFR-certified 172s for instrument work, and the Seneca for the multi-engine rating.
172 Skyhawk The glass-panel trainer
A 180 HP Cessna 172 with dual Garmin G5s and a Garmin GTN 375. This is the airplane that makes the step from Private into instrument work feel like a continuation rather than a restart. $155/hr wet.
172 Skyhawk IFR certified
160 HP and IFR certified, with a Garmin G500 PFD/MFD and a Garmin 430W. This is where instrument students spend their approaches. $155/hr.
172 Skyhawk The 180-horse VFR trainer
180 HP, VFR only, and it makes no claim to be anything else — pattern work, cross-countries, and the hours that turn into a certificate. $145/hr.
172M Skyhawk Where most students start
160 HP, VFR only, steam gauges, and the least expensive hour on the field at $145/hr wet. Straightforward systems and everything a Private Pilot certificate actually asks of you.
Seneca III Multi-engine training
Our twin: a 1983 Piper Seneca III with a Garmin 375 and a King 225 autopilot with flight director. This is where the Multi-Engine rating happens, and where a commercial student finds out what a second engine really asks of a pilot. $395/hr + tax, wet; dual instruction $85/hr.
Maintenance is in house. Nothing gets ferried out to a shop three states away and disappears for a month, and that single fact is the biggest reason a lesson gets cancelled at other schools and doesn’t get cancelled here.
Flying more than one airplane makes a better pilot. Steam gauges and glass, 160 and 180 horsepower, VFR and IFR — by the time you take a checkride you have adapted to a panel you didn’t memorize, which is exactly what the rest of your flying will ask of you.
Something else about the airplane? Call 715-394-6444.
A Cessna 172. We have four of them, from a 160 HP VFR trainer up to a 180 HP airplane with dual Garmin G5s and a GTN 375, plus an IFR-certified 172 with a Garmin G500. Multi-engine training happens in our 1983 Piper Seneca III.
Maintenance is done in house, in our own hangar here on the field, on the inspection schedule every training aircraft follows — a 100-hour inspection for aircraft flown for hire, and an annual inspection every twelve months. Keeping that work here rather than sending airframes away is the reason our aircraft downtime stays short.
Five: four Cessna 172s and a Piper Seneca III, plus a PFC DCX Max training device for procedures. It is a small fleet for a small school, lessons are booked ahead, and in-house maintenance is what keeps the airplane you reserved from disappearing to a shop for a month.
Usually early on, and deliberately not forever. Consistency helps at the start, so most students spend their first lessons in one airplane; later we move you between our 172s on purpose, because a pilot who has only ever flown one panel isn’t really finished.
Both, on purpose. N616SK has dual Garmin G5s and a Garmin GTN 375, and N784BG is IFR certified with a Garmin G500 PFD/MFD and a 430W; N5490H and N737DV are conventional steam-gauge VFR trainers. Learning across both makes you a considerably more adaptable pilot.
Superior Flying · above the cloud deck Book a Discovery Flight and take the controls yourself — or call 715-394-6444 to talk through your training.
Serving Duluth · Hermantown · Cloquet · Ashland
