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Williamsburg Flight Center is the first air tour business in the Historic Triangle to form partnerships with resort communities offering guests flights that allow them to see the old world from a modern vantage point.
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Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown...There’s another way to experience this historic grandeur without wearing out the soles of your shoes: 1,000 to 3,000 feet up in a Cessna 172.
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He came to Williamsburg for a year or two in 2010. Fifteen years later Shaun Stewart is still here running a successful air tour business.
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Shaun Stewart offers several types of air tours: the forty-five minute Historic Triangle tour of Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown, and more; the one-hour tour to see historic plantations; and a thirty-minute personalized air tour anywhere in the fifty-mile flight diameter around the airport.
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“We’ll modify any tour,” says Shaun Stewart, adding “We just name the price it costs to put the airplane in the air. You’re paying for the time.” That’s customized touring.
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Between tours Shaun Stewart catches up with his family, son Christian, wife Benjarin, and daughter Stella.
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Williamsburg Flight Center offers flight lessons, air tours, and aircraft maintenance.
Famed aviator Amelia Earhart may have said it best. “You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.”
She may not have been—in fact, she probably wasn’t—talking about the shadows of the great oaks of Williamsburg, but Shaun Stewart knows exactly what she meant.
In fact, he’s revolutionized his business based on that.
Thanks to Stewart, while visitors line up for walking tours at Jamestown Settlement, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Yorktown Victory Center, there’s another way to experience this historic grandeur without wearing out the soles of your shoes: 1,000 to 3,000 feet in the air in a Cessna 172.
Stewart is the owner, chief flight instructor, and pilot at Williamsburg Flight Center on Marclay Road, a stone’s throw from Williamsburg Winery. While the center offers flight lessons and performs aircraft maintenance, in March 2014, they began offering public air tours.
The Flight Path to Williamsburg
Stewart, a graduate of the aerospace program at Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, came to Williamsburg in 2010. It was supposed to be a temporary stop for him to build up his flight hours toward becoming an airline pilot.
“When I was growing up, I visited Williamsburg on family vacations,” says Stewart. “When I knew that I had to move away from [Tennessee] to find a job, there was a company here called North American Flight Center. The guy talked it up and I thought Williamsburg would be a nice town for a temporary stop to build my flight hours. The point was to be here for a year or two, tops. So my wife Benjarin and I got the smallest apartment, the closest apartment, and the cheapest apartment.”
Long story short, the company is no longer in existence and Stewart is still here. The temporary layover gave way to permanent residence, a bigger house, and bigger family— he and his wife have a son, Christian, who is nearly two years old, and a daughter, Stella, three years old.
“Our daughter is profoundly deaf and has cochlear implants,” he explains. “ She had an infection while in her mother’s womb. We take her to therapy for coordination, balance, and hearing.”
And he takes her flying.
Stella and Christian have both flown with their father. “The plane was a little loud for her cochlear devices,” says Stewart. “But once she took her processors off, she loved it. [Christian] had his first airplane ride this [spring]. We went up for ten minutes. He fell asleep toward the end, but to this day he still says ‘airplane’ and makes flying noises and gestures towards the sky.”
Stewart says his wife enjoys flying too, but she primarily helps him with business operations and is supportive of the work he’s doing to provide a niche market benefit to tourism in Williamsburg.
Old World, Modern Vantage Point
While Stewart’s outfit isn’t the first to introduce the idea of flight tours to the Historic Triangle—a former pilot and historian once flew sightseers from the same space years ago, says Stewart—it is the first to partner with some of the resort communities in Williamsburg, such as King’s Creek, to offer its guests flights that allow them to see the old world from a modern vantage point.
“We have three air tours,” he says. “The first is a forty- five-minute Historic Triangle tour. You’ll see Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, Busch Gardens, Carter’s Grove—a plantation you can’t see from the ground, Chippokes Plantation, and Bacon’s Castle. It shows you anything in Williamsburg that you care to see.”
“The hour air tour is the historic plantations air tour. You will see many mansions including Berkeley, Westover, and Flowerdew Hundred to name a few.”
One couple from New Jersey flew with him while staying at King’s Creek.
“They were amazed at the rivers and the landscape they saw,” Stewart says. “They loved it and had no idea that Williamsburg would be this pretty from the air.”
The third tour is a thirty-minute personalized air tour anywhere in the fifty-mile flight diameter—twenty-five miles in any direction—spanning from Hopewell to Hampton and Deltaville to Wakefield, with its Williamsburg airfield as the starting point.
“We’ll modify any tour,” Stewart says, now opening a map and pointing. “We’re different than a lot of air tours where we just name the price it costs to put the airplane in the air. You’re paying for the time. If you don’t want to do any of our tours, we’ll customize one for you. So if you say, ‘I grew up around here. Can we fly over here? And I want to see Busch Gardens,’ that’s fine. Or ‘Can we fly over the dead fleet over here? That’s pretty cool. And I’d like to see the Newport News Shipyard.’ “Sure, we’ll do that. If it takes thirty minutes, it takes thirty minutes, or if it takes forty-five minutes, it takes forty-five minutes. If longer, we’ll prorate it.”
Bringing Tourists and Locals Alike to the Airport
Larry Waltrip, the owner and general manager of Williamsburg Airport, with his late wife, Jean, broke ground on the site in the late 1960s and opened its doors to the public on September 20, 1970. He’s excited about the rebirth of air tours and what its doing to a little airport with some surprising history of its own.
“We’ve been here for forty-five years, and we’ve had six astronauts based at the airport, and many celebrities have come through the airport, like Merv Griffin, Arnold Palmer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Bill Clinton,” says Waltrip, who is also a Virginia Aviation Hall of Famer and the only one to be inducted with his wife.
“The benefit of the air tours is that it brings people out to the airport,” says Waltrip. “It’s quite a tour. It really is. They can talk about the areas where they had the war, fly over Yorktown and Jamestown and see where the settlers came in. It gives you a different perspective when you see it from the air instead of the ground.”
And the best part, Stewart says, is it creates memories most passengers never expect.
Just before press time, Stewart received his latest of many TripAdvisor reviews from a self-proclaimed “protective momma” who felt at ease trusting her husband, seven-year-old son, and father in the air with Stewart.
“He let them decide on the things to see around Williamsburg, Newport News, and Yorktown. They visited Busch Gardens, the Huntington Ingalls shipyard, and the York River during the trip,” she wrote.
But the best part by far was the first-row seats to the Langley Air Force Base airshow.
“The Langley u was happening at the same time and they had the best seats in the house for it: in the sky,” she wrote. “They landed safely about an hour later with lots of pictures and great memories to share. It’s a really unique way to see the historic area for tourists and locals alike.”
For more information visit williamsburgflightcenter.com.
