First female-owned flight school founded in US over 100 years ago by ‘Flying schoolgirl’

At first, Katherine Stinson wanted to become a musician.

Although she grew up in a family that longed to explore the skies, the first woman to start a flying school actually was searching for the means to get to Europe to study piano. But it would be a long and expensive journey by land and sea from her native San Antonio, Texas, USA, and Katherine always knew there had to be a better way.

Turns out her passion for music and aviation were aligned, when she read a news article that said barnstorming or exhibition pilots were earning $1,000 a show.

“She wanted to take that money and go to Europe and eventually study piano, and that was her entry into aviation,” said Deputy Aviation Director Tim O’Krongley at the San Antonio Airport system.

In 1915, aviation was still in its early stages – just 12 years before, the Wright brothers invented the airplane and took their famous first 12-second flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA.

But technology progressed quickly, and by 1911 civilian flying was more accessible, and Katherine’s dreams of travelling the skies suddenly became actualized. On 24 July 1912, she became the fourth woman in the US to earn her flying license (No. 148 from the Aero Club of America) and soon after began exhibition flying.

Although she was 21 at the time, because of her young looks she quickly became known as the “flying schoolgirl.”

Katherine Stinson with her biplane. Photo credit: Library of Congress / George Grantham Bain Collection

Riding on her successes as an exhibition pilot, Katherine and her flight-minded family found a plot of land west of the San Antonio River where they wanted to set up a flight school. Inspired by the successes of Katherine, her brother found the plot, and her sister Marjorie went to the City Council to petition them to open up a school. They rented her 500 acres of land for $5 a year – a pretty good deal.

The Stinson School of Flying officially opened on 13 November 1915 by Emma Beaver Stinson and her three children (Marjorie, Katherine and Eddie), which the National Register of Historic Places lists as the second oldest continuously operated airport in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi.

It also officially became the first female-owned flying school, and one of the top aviation schools in the country thanks to the hard work from the Stinson family. Katherine and her sister, Marjorie, who was the Chief Flying Instructor, gave flying lessons, while her mother Emma managed the firm, which also rented and sold aircraft.

Katherine’s legacy as a famous stunt pilot continued in the years after she founded the flight school, and eventually took her to Europe (just not for piano). She travelled to England, Japan, and China, and broke many record titles for endurance and distance flying. 

Her stunt flights raised over $2 million for the American Red Cross, and she officially became the first woman to perform the loop-the-loop maneuver (which she would repeat successfully hundreds of times). 

She also became the first female pilot for US Air Mail, and volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Europe during WWI.

Although the family moved to San Antonio from Arkansas prior to the First World War after opening the Stinson Aviation Company in Hot Springs, they continued to teach flying to civilians and members of the Canadian Air Force until 1917, when the Stinson Flying School was taken over by the federal government and the City of San Antonio to train pilots during World War I. They placed a ban on civilian flying, and the Stinson Flight School was closed.

However, the airfield still exists and is in use today. It was expanded upon heavily by the City and Federal government during WWI and WWII, as the Air Force added over 100 buildings and utilized it as a training base. But the original terminal is still left virtually untouched, and as the city celebrated its century of Aviation in San Antonio in 2015, they began a process to add new improvements and developments to one of the most historic airfields in America.

Header image: Library of Congress / George Grantham Bain Collection