A Great Place for IFR

The Monterey Bay is ideal for IFR training.

Airports

There are multiple IFR airports within minutes of Watsonville.

  • Watsonville: Our base of operations, has 3 non-precision approaches
  • Salinas: 19 miles South of Watsonville, with several non-precision approaches, and an ILS precision approach.
  • Monterey: 21 miles Southwest of of Watsonville, several non-precision approaches, and an ILS precision approach.
  • Marina: 15 miles South of Watsonville, 2 non-precision approaches

All of this leads to effective IFR training, with little time wasted for travel.

Weather

The Monterey Bay is frequently subject to coastal fog and this provides an ideal introduction to 'actual' instrument weather conditions.

This is very important experience during training that is often missed in desert training locations, where there is little 'actual' IFR training experience.