Airline Pilot Training Admissions and Discovery Flight!

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About Us

At Race City Flight Operations, we value high quality flight instruction over quick instruction. Race City Flight Operations works to improve, innovate, and make a better environment and training program for our students. Our goal is to help create pilots – whether you want to be an airline pilot or a hobby pilot-great and safe pilots instead of using the minimums as the completion standards. We believe, if they are taught to be great pilots, they will be safe and competent pilots months and years after their training.

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Airline Pilot Training Discovery and Admissions Flight Airline Pilot Training Discovery and Admissions Flight
Airline Pilot Training Discovery and Admissions Flight Airline Pilot Training Discovery and Admissions Flight

Race City Flight Operations has been recognized for its high standard of accomplishment in flight training by The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the world’s largest aviation association. Race City Flight Operations has been awarded a spot on the Flight Training Experience Awards as a Distinguished Flight School, a title given to high scoring flight schools & instructors from the 2025 Flight Training Experience Survey.

The 2025 awards were drawn from flight students and pilots who voluntarily reviewed their flight training experience this past fall through an AOPA online customer satisfaction survey. The process yielded an evaluation of 780 different flight schools and 1,202 individual flight instructors.

Our Training Program

We’ve made Race City Flight Operations your preferred flight school to learn to fly, whether your goal is an airline pilot career, commercial pilot or family hobby pilot. By making the student the priority, we are focused on you and your success! Start your airline pilot training and career FAST! We are dedicated to you and your goals, so we use a syllabus for all of your training. By using a syllabus, just like your airline pilot career training, and just like your previous school education, we ensure you know your path and can prepare for lessons on your own time. Before you show up for a lesson, you can read our available textbooks, watch YouTube videos, or reread your notes from our ground school course. Why pay for your training twice if you would prefer to study on your own time? We know your time is valuable, but we also understand your money is just as valuable. We make sure your airline pilot training, your commercial pilot training, or your family hobby pilot training is focused on you and getting you trained quickly but making sure you are safe and competent! Our aircraft fleet is the same, so if your usual airplane is being used by another airline pilot career student, you will be able to fly in the same airplane. Don’t get fooled by a high wing or a low wing airplane as an easy replacement-there are differences and when you are airline pilot training and working on becoming a safe and competent pilot, why not focus on your training first and then work on learning different airplanes. Just like when you are an airline pilot, you will fly one type of airplane all day, every airplane is the same, so why not train the same way. For your private pilot training, we will focus on your training with one primary instructor and a backup instructor if they are unavailable. The trust and relationship you develop with your pre-solo instructor is very important, so we want to ensure your success with an instructor who knows you and your personality. If you don’t like your instructor or would rather try another instructor, we have plenty of other instructors to work with to ensure your success. All of our instructors understand when students want to switch to another instructor. When it comes time to get instrument training, we have a great simulator that we start. Just like airline pilot training, we “fly” in the simulator to train on the procedures, before we go fly the airplane. It’s an important difference, that lets us efficiently use your time and your money to make you a safe and competent airline pilot. Nothing is more important than your training, so we use ground instruction and the simulator to ensure you are prepared to fly. Once you are done with instrument training, commercial pilot training becomes really fun. The requirements to become a commercial pilot have time minimums, so there will be time to fly around and have fun. We know that your airline pilot training can be challenging, but very rewarding, so we want to ensure when there is time to have fun but still be productive.
 
We are all here to ensure your success in your airline pilot training, commercial pilot training or family hobby training. We get it-we are just like you!
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Why Race City Flight Operations?

We are one of the best flight schools to become a COMMERCIAL pilot, AIRLINE pilot or your FAMILY pilot!

Small runway creates CONFIDENCE anywhere you go.

AATD FLIGHT SIMULATOR continues training through unfavorable flying weather.

In-house MAINTENANCE ensures our planes are always available to our students.

FRIENDLY and DEDICATED team members.

COMPETITIVE PRICES with flight schools in the area.

Available for flight lessons 7 days a week allowing FLEXIBILITY for every student’s schedule.

HOUSING is available for out of region students. Get out of the bad weather and fly with us!

BEGIN YOUR FLIGHT TRAINING

Our Instructors!

Our flight instructors are dedicated to our students’ goals. The student may be an airline pilot career hopeful, or the student may just casually want to learn how to fly. Either way-the priority is always the student. By teaching from a syllabus, your progress will never be held up by a vacation or sickness.

Instructor Details

Check Out What We’re Doing!

Aerial view of the Lake Norman Airpark runway and hangars on a wooded peninsula of Lake Norman
05 Nov
Airport History

In 1993, this airport’s founder gave away his own land rights — but wrote in one sentence that saved the runway forever. In December 1993, Thomas Wilson did something unusual: he permanently gave up his own development rights over roughly 39 acres — including the runway — donating a conservation easement that bars residential or commercial development on that ground forever.

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But buried in the document is the line everything else depends on: the land could still be used "as a limited-use private airport." Tha...
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Aerial view of the Lake Norman Airpark runway clearing surrounded by woods near Lake Norman
02 Nov
Airport History

In 1990, one man had an idea most people thought was crazy: what if your driveway was a taxiway? Thomas Wilson didn’t just want to keep the runway open — he wanted to build a residential community where people could park their airplane outside their own front door. He formed Tom Wilson Properties, struck a deal with the flying club so they could keep operating, and started building what would become Lake Norman Airpark.

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Tie-downs, a renovated clubhouse, even a telephone line followed. Wilson insisted the aviation side — flight school, maintenance, fuel ...
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Aerial view of the Lake Norman Airpark runway and surrounding land on the Lake Norman peninsula
30 Oct
Airport History

While everyone was watching the flying club, someone was quietly buying up the land underneath it. Starting in the 1970s, Safe Wings began quietly assembling the ground around the airstrip — a parcel from the Sherrills in ’74, the Andersons in ’75, the Parkers in ’71, and Katherine Austin in ’84. By January 1989, all four tracts were folded into a single deed and sold to one man: Thomas S. Wilson.

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Nobody knew it yet, but the airport’s entire future — the houses, the hangars, the neighborhood — was about to be decided by what this ...
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Historic black-and-white aerial photo of the Lake Norman Airpark airstrip
27 Oct
Airport History

In just under a decade, this airport changed hands three different times. Running an airport is expensive, and the founding club learned that fast. In 1969, they handed day-to-day operations to a for-profit partner, Safe Wings, Inc. — who took over maintenance and running the field in exchange for covering the club’s rent.

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Then in 1978, the whole field was subleased again, this time to a new operator named Donald Anklin, who could run a full air-transport ...
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There's a plane sitting on the bottom of Lake Norman right now. It's been there since 1978. The 1970s were hard on the young club — membership fell from over 50 to just 21 by 1971. Then in 1978, club founder John Gibson crashed a Lake LA-4 amphibian near the D4 marker. He and his passenger got out safely, but the aircraft was never recovered. It's still down there. Somewhere under Lake Norman, a piece of the airport's own history has been resting on the lakebed for over 45 years.
22 Oct
Airport History

There’s a plane sitting on the bottom of Lake Norman right now. It’s been there since 1978. The 1970s were hard on the young club — membership fell from over 50 to just 21 by 1971. Then in 1978, club founder John Gibson crashed a Lake LA-4 amphibian near the D4 marker. He and his passenger got out safely, but the aircraft was never recovered.

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It's still down there. Somewhere under Lake Norman, a piece of the airport's own history has been resting on the lakebed for over 45 ye...
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Lessons used to cost $3.50 an hour. By early 1965, the young club had bought its first two airplanes — a Piper Super Cruiser and a Piper J-3 Cub — and started teaching people to fly for $3.50 an hour. A year later, the Grand Opening brought an airshow and a raffle for an airplane ride, and membership climbed to 51 by that April. By 1966 they'd broken ground on a clubhouse. By 1970 the runway was a 2,400-foot grass strip — no pavement, no lights, just a strip of grass and a bunch of people who loved to fly.
19 Oct
Airport History

Lessons used to cost $3.50 an hour. By early 1965, the young club had bought its first two airplanes — a Piper Super Cruiser and a Piper J-3 Cub — and started teaching people to fly for $3.50 an hour. A year later, the Grand Opening brought an airshow and a raffle for an airplane ride, and membership climbed to 51 by that April.

Posted by author-avatar
0
By 1966 they'd broken ground on a clubhouse. By 1970 the runway was a 2,400-foot grass strip — no pavement, no lights, just a strip of ...
Continue reading
It started with five guys from Mooresville and a $300-a-year lease. In the summer of 1964, five Mooresville businessmen filed the paperwork for a new nonprofit: the Lake Norman Aviation Club. That July, they signed a lease with Duke Power for 11.9 raw acres of the brand-new peninsula — $300 a year, paid in $150 installments twice a year, plus $130 to Duke Power for the trees they'd need to clear. The North Carolina National Guard was called in to grade the strip. They called it "Mooresville Airport." Nobody involved that summer could have guessed it would still be a working airport six decades later.
15 Oct
Airport History

It started with five guys from Mooresville and a $300-a-year lease. In the summer of 1964, five Mooresville businessmen filed the paperwork for a new nonprofit: the Lake Norman Aviation Club. That July, they signed a lease with Duke Power for 11.9 raw acres of the brand-new peninsula — $300 a year, paid in $150 installments twice a year, plus $130 to Duke Power for the trees they’d need to clear.

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The North Carolina National Guard was called in to grade the strip. They called it "Mooresville Airport." Nobody involved that summe...
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Huge congratulations to our private pilot student, Janvi, on crushing her solo at KHKY to knock out her towered requirements! ✈️ Even better? Her CFII, Alexis, had the best view in the house watching it all unfold straight from the tower! We are so proud of your hard work and progress, Janvi. The sky is just the beginning! 🌤️🙌
14 Oct
Solo!

Huge congratulations to our private pilot student, Janvi, on crushing her solo at KHKY to knock out her towered requirements! ✈️ Even better? Her CFII, Alexis, had the best view in the house watching it all unfold straight from the tower! We are so proud of your hard work and progress, Janvi. The sky is just the beginning! 🌤️🙌

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Fly With Race City Flight Ops and Discover your Wings! Training to become an airline pilot, you’ll want to make sure you’re ready. F...
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This airport almost wasn't a "lake" airport at all — it took Duke Power flooding an entire valley to make it one. Between 1959 and 1964, Duke Power dammed the Catawba River and flooded the valley to create what's now the largest man-made lake in North Carolina. As the water rose over old farmland and forest, it left behind fingers of high ground reaching out into the new lake. One of those fingers — the same ground that had already seen 4,000 years of history — would catch the eye of a group of local businessmen with a love of flying. The lake made the peninsula. The peninsula made the airport.
12 Oct
Airport History

This airport almost wasn’t a “lake” airport at all — it took Duke Power flooding an entire valley to make it one. Between 1959 and 1964, Duke Power dammed the Catawba River and flooded the valley to create what’s now the largest man-made lake in North Carolina. As the water rose over old farmland and forest, it left behind fingers of high ground reaching out into the new lake.

Posted by author-avatar
0
One of those fingers — the same ground that had already seen 4,000 years of history — would catch the eye of a group of local businessm...
Continue reading