Some schools build hours; we build pilots. At Pilot Rise, every flight, sim session, and debrief fits into a bigger plan—quality instruction, real mentorship, and a training system inspired by the airlines.
You learn faster, spend less, and walk away with skills that hold up in real weather and real-world flying.
We’re located just north of downtown Fort Worth at Hicks Airport.
Quality comes first—everything else follows.
Better instruction and smarter systems create safer pilots, reduce wasted hours, and move you through training faster while keeping overall costs down.
Our proprietary element-based software system—inspired by airline AQP training—tracks skills, tasks, and knowledge individually instead of locking you into rigid lessons. This keeps training flexible, personalized, and easy to adapt to weather, progress, and your learning needs.
Your instructor can create custom lessons instantly, and any instructor can pick up your training without missing a beat. Switching schools? Your full record exports cleanly for a seamless transition.
We adjust lessons around conditions with two priorities—Safety and Training Quality. If there’s a safe, productive way to adapt, our instructors find it. If not, we cancel. This reduces unnecessary cancellations and strengthens learning through recency, effect, intensity, and exercise.
Pilot Rise is based at Hicks Airport (T67) — 25 minutes north of Downtown Fort Worth.
Safety at Pilot Rise doesn’t start at the runway; it starts in the hangar. Our aircraft are cared for by FAA-certified mechanics in an on-site facility, inspected on tight intervals, and kept up to date with modern avionics so you’re not training on museum pieces.
On the pilot side, every instructor follows a structured, school-wide safety program built on clear weather minimums, checklists, and decision-making standards. The result is simple: reliable airplanes, consistent judgment, and a culture where “safe enough” is never the goal.
Most schools stop at what the FAA requires; we treat that as the starting line. We’ve built 17 additional real-world skills into your normal training timeline—at no extra program cost or added flight hours—so you finish not just “checkride ready,” but ready for actual weather, busy airspace, and a future aviation career.
What other schools consider extra, we consider standard, because your safety isn't optional.
Pilot Rise was born out of a simple question: “If this were my family learning to fly, would this be good enough?” At the school where he first instructed, founder Michael Forseth watched students rushed from lesson to lesson, boxes checked while his suggestions for better training were brushed aside. Most passed their checkrides, but they weren’t truly ready for real flying beyond the test—so they paid for more training later or carried gaps that could lead to violations, accidents, or failed training at the airlines.
Michael knew flight training didn’t have to be that way. In 2018, he founded Pilot Rise with a simple promise: quality instruction, real mentorship, and training that produces safe, confident pilots who actually feel ready to fly on their own. The goal was never to be the biggest school, but to be the place where those words actually mean something. Here, we slow down when it matters, drill the fundamentals until they feel natural, and push you when you’re ready—not just when the syllabus says so—so you can step into real flying with confidence.
That focus paid off. The students who set their sights on an airline career have gone on to fly for major carriers—not because we took shortcuts, but because they started with solid fundamentals and one-on-one guidance from instructors who care how they turn out. And we’re just as committed to anyone who simply wants to learn to fly well, whether the goal is weekend trips, business flying, or finally chasing a lifelong dream of getting in the air.
That same commitment was recognized in 2025, when AOPA named Pilot Rise a Distinguished Flight School and placed us among the top seven schools in the South Central United States. For a small operation at a local airport, it was a big confirmation that doing things the right way matters.
Today, Michael is an airline pilot and still keeps his hands on the controls of training at Pilot Rise. He works with our instructors to make sure every student experience reflects our core values of Quality, Mentorship, Safety, and Value. Our mission is unchanged: to help people achieve their goals in aviation through real teaching, strong fundamentals, and a thoughtful, honest approach to flight training.
30-minute hands-on intro flight.
See if flying is right for you.
C150 $129 • C172 $149
