What you can train for at CAE Phoenix - Aviation Academy
Discovery flight
20–30 minutes · you fly
$99–250typical Arizona price
The trial lesson. You sit in the left seat and actually fly, with an instructor beside you. Most schools credit it toward training if you carry on.
Private pilot certificate
60–75 hours in practice
$13,000–20,000industry range, all in
The licence that lets you carry passengers. The FAA minimum is 40 hours; almost nobody finishes in 40, which is why quotes built on it come in low.
Instrument rating
added after the private
$10,000–15,000on top of the private
Flying by reference to instruments, in cloud and at night with real dispatch reliability. The rating that turns a licence into transport.
Commercial pilot certificate
250 hours Part 61 · 190 Part 141
$10,000–20,000+advanced training only
The certificate you need to be paid to fly. Counted from zero, the full career track runs $80,000–120,000 and is normally financed.
Those are the honest industry ranges, not this school’s rate card — no Arizona school we checked publishes one. Ring us and we will get you their actual number, at their price, with nothing added for coming through us.
CAE Phoenix Aviation Academy is the Mesa campus of CAE, one of the largest aviation-training corporations in the world, with airline cadet programs and pilot-placement partnerships that run at a scale no independent Arizona school can approach. This location was formerly branded CAE Oxford / Global Academy Phoenix and now flies under the CAE Phoenix name.
This is corporate, structured, airline-cadet training — the kind of program where students are typically selected into a defined pathway with a specific airline partner at the far end, not individuals walking in to book a discovery flight. If your goal is a career airline seat and you want the institutional weight of a global aviation-training company behind you, this is a serious option. If you want casual lessons or a flexible weekend pace, it is not built for that.
What is it good at?
Genuine global scale — CAE trains pilots for airlines and militaries worldwide, not just a regional operation.
Structured cadet-program pathways with real airline-placement relationships behind them.
Falcon Field gives it a well-equipped, established training airport as its Arizona base.
What should you go in knowing?
This is a large corporate academy built around cadet-program selection and airline placement, not a walk-in flight school for casual learners.
Expect a formal, standardized application and selection process rather than simply calling to book a first lesson.
Pricing and program structure are specific to CAE's cadet pathways — confirm directly rather than assuming it maps to a standard hourly flight-school model.
CAE Phoenix - Aviation Academy is not currently a partner school, so there is no booking button here — just their own number and their own website, unchanged. We list every Arizona school we can verify, partner or not. Manage or upgrade this school listing →