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

Pioneering aviator volunteered as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Europe during WWI.

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.

→ Read the entire article on the Guinness World Records website here:

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