When the Stinson family leased hundreds of acres of farmland on the South Side to open a pilot school in 1916, the annual rent they paid to the City of San Antonio was $5.
More than a century later, the Stinson Municipal Airport remains the second longest continuously operating airport in the United States. It averages about 100,000 takeoffs and landings a year, and in 2021 contributed nearly half a million dollars to the city aviation department’s bottom line.
The smaller sibling of the San Antonio International Airport, Stinson is a general aviation “reliever airport,” which means that small private charter flights, helicopter tours, pilot trainees, law enforcement and medical services take off, land, maintain and store their aircraft there.
Stinson has a much longer history than its commercial counterpart, and played an important role in aviation history. Now future plans for Stinson are being considered by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the city’s aviation department.
Stinson has its beginnings as a flight school, opened in 1916 by the Stinson family, including siblings Marjorie, Katherine and Eddie, and their mother Emma. They trained many World War I fighter pilots at Fort Sam Houston and later on Stinson Field.
In 1918, Stinson became the city’s civilian airport. It was renamed in 1927 to honor a local reporter, Bill Windburn, who died in a plane crash.
By the 1930s, the airport was serving commercial airlines out of its new terminal, built with Works Progress Administration funds. Stinson airport also reverted to its original name in 1936. During World War II, the facility once again served as an Army Air Corps training site.
In 1942, San Antonio reestablished its civilian airport on the North Side and commercial airlines also moved to what was once known as Alamo Field, and is now the San Antonio International Airport.
Stinson, with the airport code SSF, remained in operation, and in 2008 underwent a major capital improvement project to expand the airport terminal by 24,000 square feet.
In 2013, a master plan update led to the construction of a new air traffic control tower at Stinson, wayfinding signage, hiking and biking trails and other beautification projects in the area.
Meanwhile, the San Antonio airport is undergoing major change. In November 2021, City Council approved a $1 billion strategic development plan that will overhaul SAT over the next 20 years.
Stinson won’t be left behind. Four months ago, the aviation department, which oversees all operations at both the San Antonio airport and Stinson, embarked on an airport layout planning process for the smaller airfield. It also circulated a survey for public input about what people would like to see at the airport.
Stinson is “incredibly important” as a reliever airport, said Jesus Saenz, director of airports for the City of San Antonio. The flight training schools at Stinson and the fixed-based operators are good for the overall general aviation community, he added. “Long term, as San Antonio continues to grow, so shall Stinson and so shall SAT,” Saenz said.
In conjunction with TxDOT, airport consultant Garver is developing an inventory of assets at the 107-year-old airport, said Morris Martin, Stinson’s airport manager.
The Stinson airport now has two 100-foot-wide asphalt runways and 13 hangars that are fully occupied with tenant-owned aircraft, Martin said. Completed in 2019, the new air traffic control tower improved sight issues the airport had with the previous 1950s-era tower.
But Stinson’s approaches to the runways are visual approaches, not precision approaches, limiting the ability of pilots to fly into the airport. During inclement weather, a pilot relying on a visual approach might not be able to see the landing strip as is required, whereas precision approaches can be made using instrumentation data.
Changing that requires extensive study and approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but that could likely be one of the coming improvements at Stinson, even if the process takes time.
“It’s a lot of going back and forth with the FAA and the different entities here,” Martin said, especially since Stinson shares airspace with military installations like Lackland and Randolph and is a neighbor to the San Antonio Missions Historical National Park.
“These are all things that you have to look at when you’re looking at improving the approaches,” he said. “You don’t want to encroach into others’ airspace, you don’t want to fly directly over the Missions.”
Airport officials are also considering building more hangars and a project to control stormwater in the north part of the airport where there’s space for expansion, Martin said. “That’s going to help us with our future development in that area.”
Former helicopter pilot and Vietnam War veteran Jim Martinson acquired two hangars at Stinson 14 years ago and went into business leasing the space to aircraft owners. Since then, Martinson and his son Jimmy Martinson have built two more hangars and added onto another. All are fully leased to private aircraft owners.
The Martinsons have considered expanding the company, Ocotillo Aviation, to other regional airports in the state, including Austin. But aviation hangars require ongoing attention, he explained, and the close proximity of Stinson makes that work more manageable.
Stinson is a good place to do business, Martinson said. “I think that we attract our share of aviation traffic pretty [nicely].” He also appreciates that Stinson is well maintained.
One change he’d like to see is the addition of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection office at the airport, which would make it a more convenient destination for clients who are flying to San Antonio from outside the country.
Already, a $1.5 million parallel taxiway is under construction at Stinson that will improve safety and allow for more airport development to the north. It is expected to be completed within six to eight months.
“The type of businesses that would go into [newly developed areas] would be corporate-type aircraft owners,” Martin said. It also would provide space for fixed-base operators to build a facility big enough for larger aircraft, such as business jets.
Stinson has an annual operating budget of $800,000. The taxiway project was partially paid for with funds from pandemic-related federal stimulus bills, Martin said, but the majority of funding for Stinson improvements comes from TxDOT and the airport’s capital improvement budget.
A full report incorporating the Stinson public survey results, airport inventory and improvement recommendations is due in about six months.
“We’re excited about releasing [the airport layout plan] similar to what we did with SAT,” Saenz said, “to ensure that Stinson continues to grow and provide the support and economic effect it provides to all of our [general aviation] operations here in and around the San Antonio region.”
