George's Aviation is situated on the corner of the PHNL airport. There is a chain linked fence with no signage on how to enter. You actually have to call their office to have someone open the gate for you. They have a medium sized hangar converted into an office. A good way to figure out that your in the right place is by looking at the plane parked on the tie down area. Their website has N numbers of their airplanes.
Called earlier to schedule a dual flight with a CFI. Decided to reschedule but in the meantime went over some ground work, did not realizing I was being charged a full hour for this ground work, did not have a chance to utilize a full hour of time with the CFI. Customers beware. For a visiting pilot to rent an airplane here, you need to do a checkout with one of the CFIs. They do not allow night flying on their rental planes. There is only 2 airports you could fly to from Oahu. One airport is 5 minutes away and another in north shore called Dillingham. Inter-island flights require a checkout to Molokai and back. About 1.5-2 hr flight.
Finally schedule a time later to do a sight seeing ride to Molokai and Lanai with another CFI. After hearing the usual ramblings of flying in a Class Bravo airspace, mind you, I live and fly in Los Angeles and own the exact airplane that I renting with this company, owned this aircraft for 4 years. I have flown in San Diego, McCarran, Tijuana and Ensenada. And not once quizzed on my aeronautical knowledge or knowledge of the aircraft. I am also a private pilot as well.
Started the plane, taxied, performed the run up. CFI was helpful in the radio calls and GPS usage. The area has strong winds with gusts. Pilots there fly more aggressively than in LA and well above Vy speeds on taking off. The view on taking off and seeing the waikiki is amazing. It is very pretty and I was in awe with the island, water, sky. Flying out of the island, the view at kailua bay is awesome. The water is so blue, it just looks unreal. For anybody thinking of doing a flight around Hawaii it is worth the scenic value. Went over to Molokai, did a touch a go at Kualapuu. There was alot of gusts, I was 800 AGL on final and with all the drafts was able to bleed all that altitude on final for a nice landing. 70 kt final in a 2000 Cessna 172 SP. Wanted to land at Kauapapa but was told that we couldn't leave the airport without state permission. If you have reservations with a tour guide, then you can leave the airport with the tour guide. Kalaupapa airport is a very scenic area, an airport at a tip of a peninsula, and light house on the side. The cliffs on Molokai are awesome. We headed over to Lanai, saw a few shipwrecks and headed back. CFI said it's been 6 months since he's done this scenic route. Got back to the ground, some complaints on the landing even though it was good. I was frustrated and annoyed at the end of flight and it didn't have to be that way. This wasn't a lesson and some of these suggestions was more religious than practice test standards. It's like whether you like your toilet paper over or under, whether you like to sleep head facing up or down or whether you prefer coke or pepsi.
Things they can do better.
Better spelling of customer's contact information. My contact information was spelled in island phonetics. CFIs there need to stop treating visiting pilot like idiots and just straight quiz the visiting pilots on their aeronautical knowledge for competence rather than assuming no competance. Hobbs time was not recorded upon starting plane, be sure you check this before you operate the airplane. CFIs needs to inform customers up front whether they are being charged for their time.
2.5 stars but we'll say 3 since Yelp doesn't allow for 2.5. read more