Aerobatic Flight Lessons With Patty Wagstaff

As I suspect many pilots around my age were during our childhoods, it could be fair to say I was partially raised by the original Top Gun movie, as well as by Microsoft Flight Simulator.

As a result, though I never joined the military, that piece of me always wanted to be Maverick. I’m sure that’s hardly unique to me, and those of us who suffer that impulse are certainly well advised to leave it on the ground for most of our straight-and-level civilian flying. 

Even on this side of the aviation world, though, who can blame us for looking at aerobatic pilots with a healthy dose of envy?

Although I only got my first real-world taste of aerobatic flight earlier this year, I was introduced to the concept as a kid on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (MSFS2024). Patty Wagstaff contributed to the design and data behind the Extra 300S that appeared as one of the flyable aircraft and, if memory serves, I believe the plane was even named for her.

Wagstaff is undoubtedly better known for much greater achievements, including winning a plethora of major aerobatic competitions and championships, receiving a National Aviation Hall of Fame induction, and plenty of others too numerous to list. Even so, encountering her through MSFS2024 as a kid was all it took to make her the definitive expert in my young mind.

Fast-forward about 20 years, and I finally found myself in a real-world Extra 300L with Wagstaff as we taxied out under a sunny St. Augustine, Florida, sky to Northeast Florida Regional Airport (KSGJ) Runway 13. My younger self surely wouldn’t have believed it.

As full circle as the moment felt, the reality is that flying with her and her team of experienced instructors at Patty Wagstaff Aviation Safety school is really just a matter of signing up to do it.

Signing Up to Fly

The school’s offerings start with short, two-flight introductions that can be flown in either a Super Decathlon or an Extra 300L, depending on the course.

From there, the options stretch into four-, five-, and 10-hour airmanship and aerobatic courses. These offer a little more time to get settled into the airplane, work through the fundamentals, and start connecting maneuvers together into a series.

The school also offers several specialized upset recovery courses for corporate and other professional students, which Wagstaff said include corporate, agriculture, and even Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI pilots. She made it clear that the school is not just there to train competitive aerobatic pilots but to provide potentially life-saving skills to pilots of all skill levels, across all missions.

“Everybody needs this kind of training,” Wagstaff said. “Even if it’s just for one day.”

Over the Water

Once we took off, we flew south down the Atlantic coast, where our focus turned to upset recovery and good stick-and-rudder flying.

Eventually, that is. For someone like me whose day-to-day flying is almost entirely over Texas farmland in far more boring airplanes than this one, the coastal flying was simply beautiful.

I took in the view of the beach off one wing with the Atlantic spread out beneath us, low enough for the flight to feel intimate with the water and shoreline while entirely relaxed from the cockpit. Unsurprisingly, the Extra had no interest in wasting control inputs. It is light, responsive, and eager in a way that makes a standard training airplane feel more like a truck by comparison.

Wagstaff, however, was the opposite of intimidating.

I think there can be some self-inflicted danger to one’s pride in flying with someone whose résumé you already know too well, but that pressure seemed to vanish with her. She was low-key, patient, and easy to fly with, giving calm feedback and letting me get used to the airplane before asking much of me. Before long, we were inverted, then rolling, and then rolling some more.

My mind was still much on board, although my stomach, after a handful of aileron rolls, had begun drafting a strongly worded letter of protest.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get better,” Wagstaff said. “Everybody does. There’s no need to push yourself too far, and don’t overreact to feeling a little nasty. It’s just part of the thing, and it will get better.”

There was no pressure to power through. A break was always and unashamedly on the table, if needed. Drink some water, have ginger ale and snacks if you need them, and try again.

In a place where the airplanes are capable of some serious stuff, the atmosphere back on the ground is professional, yet notably unserious in the best way. Wagstaff brings her dogs to the office, which she affectionately refers to as the school’s “therapy dogs,” students hang around after flights, and instructors talk through lessons on the couch in a way that feels more like a living room than a flight school lobby.

Aerobatic Home in St. Augustine

St. Augustine’s setting helps, too. Wagstaff told me the airport has been a center of aerobatic activity for decades, going back to the days after the former military field was turned over to civilian use. She said Ernie Moser leased the FBO and started putting on weekend airshows.

Over time, that evolved into a more formal aerobatic culture, and the airport’s aerobatic box remains a significant part of what makes the location work.

“It’s like the perfect place,” she said. “That’s why I moved here.”

The box is only part of the story.

“When you’re doing aerobatics, airshows, competition, you can’t really do it on your own,” she said. “You have to be around other people, just to get inspiration and just be safe.  People are watching you and looking out for you. We all critique each other—that’s the only way to get better.”

The school itself came about later, around 12 years ago. Wagstaff talked about starting it as a series of doors opening at the right time. An office became available, an airplane became available, and a student wanted to train.

“I sort of jumped into it,” she said. “And I let it evolve.”

Bigger Mission

Patty Wagstaff Aviation Safety school has evolved into something much more deliberate than the school’s casual atmosphere might suggest. Although aerobatics is surely a big part of the draw, there is a bigger mission behind what it does.

Every course starts with upset prevention and recovery training. The goal is to help pilots become safer, more skilled, more confident, and enjoy flying more.

The first priority is making sure students know what to do when the airplane is somewhere the brain does not expect it to be. That was clear from my first flight with one of the school’s other instructors, Adam Divens, in the Super Decathlon.

During our conversation on the ground, Divens and I talked a lot about rudder use, stalls, and the problem with pilots learning procedures without ever really understanding the “why” behind them or the exceptions to them. We continued chatting in the airplane, where I noticed something early on.

“Do we not have a turn coordinator in this plane?” I asked.

“Yeah, we do,” Divens replied, “under that gauge cover.”

For the type of flying we were doing, my attention needed to be outside, on situational awareness and on what the airplane felt like. An important point that all the school instructors I spoke with seemed to emphasize was that “ball in the middle” is not necessarily the best framework for operating an airplane in three dimensions, especially in VFR conditions or upset-recovery scenarios.

Looking Outside

Divens’ own path to Wagstaff’s school helps explain why he teaches that way. Before aviation, he worked in outdoor recreation as a guide in skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing, and white-water rafting.

Aerobatics appealed to the same part of him that liked those sports, especially the requisite focus and precision.

There’s a lot of precision to aerobatic sequences,” he said. “It’s not just kind of relax and do whatever you want. It’s very focused in those five minutes of a sequence.”

What drew him to the aviation school went deeper than the adrenaline. It was also the chance to teach what he thinks is often missing in primary training, including upset recovery, stall awareness, and comfort near the edges of the envelope. His first instructor taught in a basic 172, with only the bare-minimum VFR instrumentation.

“So I really got introduced for my first 30 hours to kind of the way we teach here,” Divens said. “It’s like, look outside and fly the airplane. Attitude flying, right? You don’t need all this other stuff.”

Airmanship Through Aerobatics

Instructor Ryan Marracino described the school’s broader purpose in a way that stuck with me. Marracino believes aerobatics are a way to teach and improve basic airmanship.

Marracino came to Wagstaff’s school with his own educational background, first as a chemistry teacher and later as a flight instructor who had taught in a Citabria and worked with pilots headed into agricultural flying. He said the program in St. Augustine is structured, yet adaptable to the pilot, whether the student is a new private pilot, airline pilot, or someone with military experience.

The mission, as he sees it, is straightforward: Help pilots become comfortable, confident, and safer.

He also provided the best example I heard of what that can mean outside the aerobatic box.

One of his returning students came to the school several times. He said she was not necessarily interested in competitive aerobatics but came about once or twice per year because she wanted to work on fundamentals, stalls, rudder use, and turning safely.

Then, in the real world she had an engine failure on takeoff. According to Marracino, she turned back and landed safely on the runway.

“I kept it coordinated, watched my pitch attitude, and got it back safe to the runway,” she later told him. That was music to Marricino’s ears. “She said it felt like our training saved her life in that moment,” he said.

Training for the Moment That Matters

Upset recovery training is partly about procedures, but mostly it seems to be about giving the body and brain a better set of defaults. The school focuses on a simple mantra to help with that reset.

Look, unload, roll, recover.

Look at the horizon. Unload the wing. Roll the airplane toward level. Then recover the pitch.

That is where the fun part of aerobatic training becomes quite useful. Aileron rolls, inverted flight, loops, and unusual attitudes are memorable precisely because they are unusual. They stretch the pilot’s sense of what an airplane can do, but more importantly, they make weird sight pictures start to feel less weird and recovery far more natural. If encountered again in the wild, the operative instinct is far less likely to be panic.

Why Pilots Come Back

For many students, the initial appeal is still Wagstaff’s name.

“I think I have a decent reputation, and I think that’s a big thing,” she said. “If I was known to be one of these crazy people who does crazy things, then I think it would work against me. But I think people see me as a professional.”

She also pointed to Florida and its consistent year-round climate.

“I think the weather and the location is a big part of it, too,” she said. “It’s a lot easier to attract people to St. Augustine than it is to New York or someplace like that.”

St. Augustine is a real destination, with its history, beaches, restaurants, and enough non-aviation appeal that a pilot can bring the family and not feel too guilty disappearing for the morning.

Wagstaff said some students do exactly that. They fly for a bit in the mornings, then spend the rest of the day with family at the beach or downtown. Others come back year after year for a day or two of recurrent training. Some even return more often than that just to keep   sharp.

Regardless of how often something like this can be done, there is something deeply satisfying about doing something you first imagined as a kid. Aerobatics are highly instructive, but also fun. The fact that the fun can also make you a better, safer pilot is really the point.

Edge of the Envelope

I arrived in St. Augustine mostly anticipating flying the Extra, enjoying an afternoon at the beach, and excited about the novelty of flying with Wagstaff. But I left with a far better appreciation for stick-and-rudder basics, as well as an awareness that these are not something to be completely mastered but rather be perpetually revisited and nurtured.

That may be the biggest value of the Patty Wagstaff Aviation Safety school. It offers an exciting taste of rolls, inverted flight, big-name instruction, and a beautiful Florida coastline underneath. 

But while I was grinning, I also got to work on the parts of my flying that most needed improving.

“The nice thing about the school too is people that come here want to be here,” Wagstaff said. “They’re excited about it. I don’t think anybody ever leaves here without feeling like they’ve learned something.”

I may never be Maverick, but I am sure glad I can always book a few days in St. Augustine.

This feature first appeared in the July/August 2026 Issue of Plane + Pilot magazine.