The human obsession with flight stems from a refusal to accept limitations and an intense desire to finally move out of gravity's basement. Claim your own airspace with today's Groupon.

The Deal

$30 for a 30-minute flight-simulator experience with 30 minutes of instruction (a $60 value)
$55 for a 60-minute flight-simulator experience with 60 minutes of instruction (a $120 value)

Following an initial safety briefing, goals assessment, and tour of the facilities, students saddle up in a choice of virtual steeds, including a single-propeller Cessna, a multiengine Twin Aztec, and a lawn chair held aloft by a deluxe balloon bouquet. Sky jockeys depart from a selected airport to flit about true-to-life simulations of real-world locales as the Redbird FMX simulator rocks like a real plane, giving pupils a taste for flight as they acquire experience to apply toward a full private pilot’s license course. Throughout the session, a qualified instructor plays puppet master in the copilot’s seat, pulling the strings that control craft functionality, weather conditions, and fashion-industry favorability of aviator sunglasses.

Birmingham Flight Center

Birmingham Flight Center’s skilled instructors equip pupils with aeronautical know-how through classroom, flight-simulator, and in-the-air training. Students blast off into the pixeled yonder in Redbird FMX simulators—equipped with 200-degree wraparound views, full-motion capabilities, and digital parachutes in case of lost dogfights—or pilot the center’s top-notch, genuine fleet. Offering levels of instruction from Learn to Fly private pilot-certification courses to FAR Part 141 expedited commercial training, the flight center prepares the pilots of tomorrow while maintaining its founders’ legacy of aeronautical excellence, which stretches back more than 70 years.