Fly with us

We meet every weekend at the airfield even if the weather is not necessarily favourable.

Visitors are always welcome to have a look at what we do and perhaps even enjoy an air experience flight. Air Experience Flights

If you are interested you may want to try an air experience flight, i.e. fly with one of our qualified instructors in one of the two-seat gliders. As the two-seat trainers have dual controls you will generally sit it the front seat, the instructor in the back. Once airborne and if you are keen, there is the opportunity for you to take over the controls and try your hands at flying the glider yourself. This is quite safe as the instructor will be able to guide you and take full control any time.

Please note that our gliders have a placarded maximum weight limit, generally 110kg per seat. Passengers and/or pilots heavier than the placarded weight limit of the particular glider or seat cannot fly that aircraft.

For the cost of an air experience flight please refer to our price list. Contrary to common belief gliding is not as expensive as some might think.

We also offer (Gift) Vouchers as per our normal price list. Vouchers can be obtained by contacting the club by phone (08) 8864 5062 or email admin@bgc/.asn/.au.

Learning to fly

After an air experience flight you may decide you like it and would like to learn to fly sailplanes. The Balaklava Gliding Club offers complete flight training carried out by fully qualified instructors to the standards laid out by the Gliding Federation of Australia. As all our instructors are volunteers and we use a winch to launch our gliders this is quite affordable.

Learning to fly a glider is much the same as learning to fly a light aircraft. In the glider used for training the instructor will usually sit behind you and have a full set of duplicate controls. How long it will take you to solo depends on a number of factors such as your aptitude, how open you are to the instructor’s guidance, and how relaxed you are. The closer together the lessons are, the easier it is to build on the knowledge gained from previous one and the faster you will learn.

Once you are able to fly the glider solo another new world will open for you and, if you are so inclined, there is the opportunity to perhaps become an instructor yourself one day.