Spitfire Aviation

I really really enjoy working at Spitfire Aviation. The school atmosphere is relaxing and interesting. As an employee， I learned a lot from our team. And all most all of our students have an impressive and valuable experience with us. If anyone want to learn how to fly， I would definitely recommend Spitfire Aviation as your first choice!

I’ve had some very dishonest experiences here. Recommend other places on the airport for both scenic tours and flight training. Do your homework before you choose a flight school. Hang around and ask some local pilots too. They’ll steer you in the right direction. Good luck!

I used andrea read back in 2008. Flew from SBA to Los Angeles. She switched the plane on me to a cheap old rusty looking plane and the. and charged more when I asked to go in the originally discussed plane. She never returned calls or emails when I complained about her over billing, and I know she’s very unethical. A quick search of her on Google reveals her criminal charges for insurance fraud that she’s now on probation for.
Also, notice that she gave herself a 5 star review her saying she has «worked for» spitfire, but she’s the owner. I don’t think that is ethical either.

After my first visit (see original review), the owner contacted me personally and did all she could to rectify the situation. We re-​scheduled for the next day and I had a great time. I’m looking forward to my next flight in August!

I really enjoyed my flight training at Spitfire Aviation. I have experienced all of the flight schools at the Santa Barbara Airport and Spitfire is by far the BEST. There staff has amazing level of experience, some of their instructors at Spitfire that have been teaching for over 20 years which translates to high quality training at a fair price. I would not hesitate recommending this place. I continue to fly here because the planes are well maintained and Spitfire has on line scheduling which allows me ²⁴⁄₇ access to renting their planes

I have worked at Spitfire for 14 years and I would recommend this school to anyone interested in learning to fly.

Participated in a Discovery Flight at Spitfire Aviation, and it was amazing! I am very scared of flying, but my fiancée has always wanted to try it, so I sucked it up and went with him. Andrea was informative, friendly, professional, and clearly experienced. She had my fiancée take off (after she taxied the plane to the runway), gain altitude, fly around Goleta and over the ocean, and then took the controls for the landing. While the fiancée wishes the flight was a little longer (it lasted about 20 minutes total in the air), I think it was a reasonable amount of time for $ 99, as regular lessons run about $ 250 an hour for the plane rental and flight instructor.
I also appreciated how honest Andrea was with us. As a young professional couple living in SB, we don’t have much disposable income. She explained to us that, at the very least, my fiancée should take one training flight per week in order to improve and gain his license, and that if we couldn’t afford to do that right now, it was best to wait. When we can afford the whole program, we will definitely be doing the training with Andrea!
If you have ever had any sort of interest in flying, or just want to see Santa Barbara from a different perspective, go to Spitfire!