Discounts for Clemson students, employees, and ROTC cadets
Discounts for Clemson students, employees, and ROTC cadets
Upstate Flight School is at Oconee County Airport (KCEU), five minutes from Clemson University. We train cadets from both Clemson Army ROTC and Air Force ROTC, and we build schedules around the commitments that come with the program.
If flying is somewhere in your plan, whether that is a service aviation path or a certificate you want in hand before you commission, starting now is worth more than starting later. Hours in a logbook take calendar time to accumulate, and the semester in front of you is the flexible one.
Cadet Flight Block · Reserve by September 15
Instruction included.
Ten hours of flight training in our Piper Cherokee 180, with your instructor's time included in the price. That is $200 an hour all in, against the $220 an hour a Clemson cadet would otherwise pay for the airplane and instruction separately. You save $200.
Ten hours is not a token. It is roughly the point where a student pilot has done air work, has flown the pattern enough times for landings to start making sense, and knows for certain whether this is something they want to finish.
Open to Clemson ROTC cadets only, with valid Army or Air Force ROTC ID. One per cadet. Offer ends September 15, 2026. Reserved by phone or email, not online checkout.
Cadets get a better hourly rate than anyone else, and the block is priced below even that.
| Paying as | Per hour | 10 hours |
|---|---|---|
| Standard rate | $230 | $2,300 |
| ROTC cadet rate | $215 | $2,150 |
| Cadet Flight Block | $200 | $2,000 |
Per-hour figures combine the Cherokee 180 wet rate with instruction at $55/hr. Full rates are posted on our pricing page.
If an aviation path is anywhere in your plan, arriving with real stick time and a certificate in hand is a different conversation than arriving with an interest. That is true whether you are looking at Army aviation branch or an Air Force pilot slot.
Flight hours also take calendar time to accumulate. There is no way to compress them later, and the semester in front of you is the flexible one.
And for cadets whose plan has nothing to do with military flying, a Private Pilot rating is simply one of the better things you can walk away from college holding. It does not expire.
Cadets have the most structured weeks on campus. Morning PT, leadership lab, class, and everything else stacked on top. We train under FAA Part 61, which means we set the order and the pace of your training rather than following a fixed syllabus calendar, and we schedule you into the gaps you actually have.
The airport being five minutes from Clemson University is what makes that possible. A lesson is a lesson, not a lesson plus two hours of driving. Cadets who fly once or twice a week make steady progress. Cadets who fly once a month spend paid time relearning what faded.
Winston is our instructor, and he holds CFI, CFII, and MEI certificates. You fly with the same instructor every lesson, so nobody has to get up to speed on where you are.
Full terms are in our Flight Training and Rental Agreement, which you will sign before your first lesson.
Start with a discovery flight instead. About ninety minutes total, an hour of it in the air, and you will be flying the airplane for most of that with an instructor beside you. No experience needed and no commitment.
If you decide to keep going afterward, that time counts toward your Private Pilot rating, and you can put the block in place then. Just fly it before September 15, since that is when the cadet block closes.
Want the numbers for the whole rating, not just the block? Price out your training →
60 minutes flying, 90 minutes total. You'll be at the controls for most of it, with a CFI beside you the whole time.
Cadets: to reserve the $2,000 Cadet Flight Block instead, call us at (864) 280-7257 by September 15.
Book a Discovery Flight
