There’s a map on the wall of Paul Sallach’s two-story All In Aviation office at Henderson Executive Airport that shows with pushpins all the airports and airstrips where he has ever landed and taken off in his life.
There are hundreds of pins.
“You see a lot of them in North Dakota where I grew up,” Sallach said. “I went to school to be an airline pilot in North Dakota.”
That was in 1999.
“Right when I was ready to get an airline job, the World Trade Center just went crumbling down to the ground. And there were no airline jobs to be had,” he said.
“So I say, ‘Shoot, what do I do now?’ There was this little company nobody ever heard of, Cirrus Aircraft, that was making airplanes in Duluth, Minnesota. So I drove down the road to Duluth right there by Lake Superior and I taught people how to fly their new airplane.
“At that point, I realized, ‘Huh, this is something I could do.’ People make money selling airplanes and I still do that to this day. And truthfully, this whole flight school thing, it started just so that I could sell more airplanes. Because what was happening is I would sell an airplane to somebody and nobody here locally was there to take care of the customer after the sale.”
That’s how Sallach’s company grew to become the largest flight school in Southern Nevada, one of 11 in a region considered one of the best places in the country to learn how to fly with its consistently favorable weather.
Good weather
With nearly 300 days of sunshine each year, a dry climate and usually wind-free days, flight schools are plentiful at Henderson Executive Airport and its crosstown counterpart, North Las Vegas Airport.
“Flight schools and other aviation businesses play a crucial role in supporting the overall industry by training the next generation of pilots, which is essential for both commercial and general aviation,” said Clark County Aviation Department Public Information Administrator Luke Nimmo.
“These businesses contribute significantly to the local economy through aircraft fuel purchases, maintenance services and employment opportunities,” Nimmo said. “Additionally, aircraft storage and business aviation operations help sustain the general aviation ecosystem at these airports.”
All In Aviation is Henderson’s largest school with 21 aircraft and 26 hangars covering 5½ acres. Sallach partnered with Kenny Scherado, who headed Lone Mountain Aviation, an aircraft maintenance company, to build the Henderson operation that includes a 24,000-square-foot maintenance facility. When Scherado retired, Sallach bought him out giving All In Aviation a one-stop shop for aircraft sales, rentals and maintenance along with the flight school. It’s fleet of 21 planes includes 15 Cirrus aircraft equipped with a special parachute safety system.
All of those safety features, plus the availability of so many different types of planes has led to dramatic expansion and growth for All In.
The company’s success led to Sallach being selected Nevada Small Business Person of the Year in 2020, although the celebration was subdued by the pandemic that year.
Sallach first started giving flight lessons at North Las Vegas in 2016, but opened a small office in Henderson two years later, expanding to the larger building in 2020. The operation is now at both airports. Sallach estimates that he usually issues 75 pilot certificates a year and has trained 400 pilots since he began.
All In is the only flight school with operations at both airports.
Nimmo said Henderson Executive Airport has two schools and North Las Vegas Airport, nine.
North Las Vegas Airport
“North Las Vegas has a more flight schools since the airport was designed with general aviation training in mind with two parallel runways, a crosswind runway, instrument landing systems and an FAA Air Traffic Control tower,” he said. “The favorable weather conditions in Las Vegas, characterized by clear skies and minimal rainfall, make it an ideal location for flight training. This consistent weather allows for more flight hours and fewer cancellations, attracting numerous flight schools to the area.”
People who want to learn to fly don’t usually go out of their way to relocate for lessons, but the favorable weather is a consideration for some. Others like to take advantage of Las Vegas’ location amid numerous natural wonders to fly here.
Some, for example, will come to Las Vegas to rent a plane so they can fly over the Grand Canyon or southern Utah’s national parks.
Nimmo said North Las Vegas Airport has a longer history as a general aviation hub, and many of its flight schools have been operating there for years.
“The reason North Las Vegas has more schools is that Henderson Executive Airport was planned primarily to support business aviation,” he said. “While the Clark County Department of Aviation does not restrict flight schools at HND, the demand there has been driven by business aviation rather than flight training.”
One of the key flight training operations at North Las Vegas is Chennault Flying Service, owned by Joe Chennault.
Over the years, Chennault has been partially driven by Air Force veterans who retired from or who were once stationed at Nellis or Creech Air Force bases north of Las Vegas.
Chennault spokeswoman Dakota Carter, herself an Air Force veteran, said a number of former military personnel have taken advantage of the GI bill to learn to fly.
Liberty partnership
The school, which has 25 instructors and 163 active students that use 20 different aircraft, is affiliated with the Lynchburg, Virginia-based Liberty University School of Aeronautics and students can learn online before completing licensure in North Las Vegas.
“Through our partnership with Liberty, it allows students to get a bachelor’s in aviation while also getting all of their flight ratings in as little as two years,” Carter said. “And it also qualifies them for a restricted ATP program, so they could go fly for the airlines with 1,000 hours instead of 1,500 hours.”
The school recently was awarded Best Regional Flight School in the western region by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
Another North Las Vegas-based flight school is Vegas Aviation, acquired in 2023 by Tom Trotter and his wife.
“We have nine aircraft in our fleet and we are able to teach students from primary flight and getting their private pilot’s license all the way up to preparing them for airline or charter work in the industry” Trotter said. “And about 80 percent of our students are professional track students, and the other 20 percent are just people that want to fly recreationally.”
Trotter said in addition to the weather, Las Vegas is a great training ground for other reasons.
Complex airspace
“It’s got a high density of aircraft flying in the area, so most of the time we’re guided by air traffic control and our ability to see other airplanes, but that high density of traffic is important for pilots to learn how to see other airplanes. We’ve got the topography, so people have to learn how to fly with mountains in the vicinity. And it’s a complex airspace because we’ve got Harry Reid just to the south of us, and Nellis to the northeast of us so you have to learn how to be able to deal with those complex airspaces.”
Local flight schools have varying degrees of connections with companies like SkyWest Airlines and Allegiant Air, which have their own training programs for flying airliners. Some have connected with Rancho High Schools Academy of Aviation which gets high school students interested in aviation careers at an early age.
As Sallach noted, future pilot shortages have created a good path for young pilots to steer toward aviation careers and he applauded the Rancho magnet program.
“It definitely helps to expose young people to this industry. I think a lot of times people view aviation as it’s not attainable,” Sallach said. “I think they really break down those barriers and help make it accessible to anybody.”
He views an aviation career as a suitable alternative to attaining a college degree.
“(Parents of students) planned on them doing a four-year degree. And let’s just say that that school was going to be around $50,000 a year. So they’ve been thinking, ‘All right, I’m going to spend $200,000 to send my kid to college, right?’ Some of these kids that are going, ‘You know what, I really want to be a pilot, and to become a licensed pilot and become a flight instructor with us, Let’s just say it’s $100,000.
“So a lot of parents are saying, ‘Why don’t you go to All In Aviation, I’ll spend $100,000, you’ll get your certifications and your licenses in about a year and a half, maybe two years, and then you’re earning money on your own in the third year,’” he said. “I’m paying our entry-level flight instructors $65,000 to $80,000 a year, two years out of high school, and then right away, when they get those 1,500 hours, two years later, they’re going to the airline and they’re making six figures. So in that four years that they would have gone to college, what do they have at the end? Do they have a degree that is going to pay them six figures?”
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.
Southern Nevada flight schools
Here’s a list of flight schools at Henderson and North Las Vegas airports:
Henderson
All In Aviation, allinaviation.com
Cactus Aviation, cactuslv.com
North Las Vegas
All In Aviation, allinaviation.com
702 Helicopters, 702helicopters.com
Chennault Flying Services, chennaultflyingservices.com
ChrisAir Aviation, chrisairaviation.co
Desert Dogs Aviation, desertdogsaviation.com
Fly Right Aviation, flyright-aviation.com
Light Sport Aviation, lightsportaviationllc.com
Vegas Aviation, vegasaviation.com
West Air Flight Training and West Air Helicopters, westairtraining.com
