GTA Online Flight School: Every Lesson and How to Get Gold Medals

GTA Online's Flight School is the fastest way to learn to fly properly, and it pays well if you are patient. Ten solo lessons, no other players needed, and a payout that can hit six figures in GTA$ in a single sitting if you gold every one of them on the first try.

The essentials at a glance

• Unlock: Rank 6 or higher (added with the San Andreas Flight School Update)
• Location: Los Santos International Airport, on Exceptionalists Way - look for the plane icon on the map
• Lessons: 10 solo challenges, aircraft provided for each one
• Medals: Bronze, Silver or Gold per lesson, judged on time or precision
• Gold payout: up to $18,600 and RP per lesson
• Perfect run: roughly $232,500 and 13,950 RP for gold on all 10 lessons, first attempt
• Bronze reward: the Elitas T-shirt, unlocked once you clear all 10 lessons with at least bronze

How to start Flight School

Head to Exceptionalists Way at Los Santos International Airport and enter the corona marker. You need to be Rank 6 or above; below that, the lessons stay locked. Every lesson spawns its own aircraft, so you do not need to own a plane or helicopter to take part, and losing or wrecking the aircraft mid-lesson just restarts the attempt.

The 10 lessons, in order

1. Outside Loop - flown in a P-996 Lazer fighter jet. Perform a full aerobatic loop and land it. Gold is a straight time trial.
2. Engine Failure - a Miljet business jet cuts out mid-air and you glide it down. Gold depends on how close to the marked stopping point you can bring the plane to a halt.
3. Chase Parachute - jump after a target, catch a mid-air parachute drop, then land as close as possible to the zone. Precision on the landing decides the medal.
4. City Landing - bring a plane down over Los Santos in poor visibility. Same principle as Engine Failure: stop as close to the marker as you can.
5. Moving Landing - land a Swift helicopter on a flatbed trailer before it drives into a tunnel. Timing the approach matters more than raw speed.
6. Formation Flying - hold a tight wingtip-to-wingtip position next to a squadron of AI planes without breaking formation.
7. Buzzard Target Run - take the Buzzard attack helicopter's cannon and destroy a set of targets against the clock.
8. Barnstorming - fly through a line of checkpoints while staying as low to the ground as you dare. Clip terrain and the run is over.
9. Top Gun - thirty checkpoints, any order, pure speed. This is the closest thing Flight School has to a race.
10. Follow the Leader - trail your instructor's P-996 Lazer through a series of sharp turns and dives without falling behind or losing the target lock.

The aircraft you will fly

Flight School rotates through several of GTA Online's core aircraft, so clearing all 10 lessons doubles as a crash course (hopefully not a literal one) in the vehicles you will actually use for heists, freemode chases and the Cayo Perico getaway.

Lesson	Aircraft	Skill it tests
Outside Loop	P-996 Lazer	Aerobatics and aim under G-force
Engine Failure	Miljet	Dead-stick gliding and judging altitude
Chase Parachute	Parachute, dropped from a plane	Precision landings on foot
City Landing	Light aircraft	Low-visibility instrument flying
Moving Landing	Swift helicopter	Matching speed with a moving target
Formation Flying	Fixed-wing plane	Holding position relative to other aircraft
Buzzard Target Run	Buzzard Attack Chopper	Aiming while flying
Barnstorming	Fixed-wing plane	Low-altitude control
Top Gun	Fixed-wing plane	Route planning and raw speed
Follow the Leader	P-996 Lazer	Reactive, high-G maneuvering

How gold medals actually work

Every lesson gives you a bronze, silver or gold rating, but the yardstick changes depending on the challenge. Time trials like Outside Loop or Top Gun reward the clock directly: Outside Loop's gold threshold sits at roughly 0:58, for example. Landing challenges like Engine Failure or City Landing instead measure how close you park the aircraft to the target marker, generally within about 10 meters for gold, while Chase Parachute is stricter still and wants you within roughly 2 meters of the drop zone. Combat and formation lessons grade on a mix of time and accuracy, so clean, deliberate flying beats reckless speed almost every time.

Tips to gold every lesson

• Retry instantly if the run feels off. Restarting costs nothing but a few seconds, and a silver medal you "finish" still counts as a completed attempt, so there is no reason to bank a bad run.
• Switch camera angle to the task. First-person view helps line up precision landings on Engine Failure and City Landing; third-person keeps better spatial awareness for Outside Loop and Follow the Leader.
• Pull up gently on Engine Failure. Fighting the descent with a hard nose-up stalls the Miljet. A shallow, steady glide gets you closer to the marker than an aggressive flare.
• Learn the checkpoint order in Barnstorming before committing to speed. One clipped rooftop ends the attempt, so a slower first pass that maps the route pays off on the second try.
• Do Top Gun last. By then you already know the map's landmarks from the other nine lessons, which makes picking an efficient checkpoint order much faster.

Why it is still worth doing in 2026

The P-996 Lazer itself is no longer exclusive to Flight School since Warstock Cache & Carry started selling it outright, so the real draw now is the cash, the RP, and the Elitas T-shirt for completionists chasing GTA Online's older cosmetic unlocks. It also remains one of the few structured ways to actually learn GTA Online's flight model instead of stalling a Buzzard into the Maze Bank Tower during your first real heist getaway.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a specific update or GTA+ membership to access Flight School? No. It has been part of the base GTA Online experience since the San Andreas Flight School Update, with no subscription attached.

Can I fail a lesson permanently? No. Crashing, running out of time or missing the medal cutoff just ends the attempt. You can retry any lesson as many times as you want, and only your best medal per lesson is what matters for the completion bonuses.

Do I need to own a hangar or any aircraft myself? No. Every lesson spawns the aircraft you need for free, so Flight School is accessible the moment you hit Rank 6, even with an empty garage.

Can other players interfere while I am doing a lesson? No. Each lesson is a solo instance, so freemode players cannot join, grief or affect your run.

Is there a trophy or achievement for finishing Flight School? It is not tied to a specific platform trophy on its own, but it counts toward broader completion tracking and unlocks the Elitas T-shirt cosmetic once every lesson is cleared with at least a bronze medal.

Once you have your gold medals locked in, put the flying to use: check our ranking of the fastest planes in GTA Online and the fastest cars for your next getaway vehicle, revisit GTA 5's own gold medal heist guide if you want to keep the streak going on the ground, compare against GTA 5's fastest helicopter ranking, and see how Flight School fits into the wider GTA 5 100% completion checklist.