Cardinal Wings Aviation: Flight training, experience gifting, and the work behind every purchase.
Cardinal Wings Aviation is a flight school, aircraft rental operation and helicopter tour business at the historic Bowman Field in Louisville. I designed and built its website, photographed the aircraft, and developed the experience store and staff tools that connect a purchase to what happens next.
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Websites I have built for Kentucky businesses
Cardinal Wings Aviation, the historic Bowman Field
12 products: six helicopter tours, five discovery flights, one gift card
Website, photography, experience commerce, gifting, staff workflows and content
Expanded site 10-14-2026, experience store opened 10-20-2026
Give every kind of visitor a place to start.
A first-time student wants to know what a discovery flight feels like. A licensed pilot may be looking for rental aircraft or another rating. Someone buying a birthday present wants to give a memorable experience without choosing a flight date for the recipient.
Those are different visits to the same business. I organized the website so each visitor can find a relevant starting point, then move toward an inquiry or a purchase without having to understand the entire operation first. Training, the aircraft fleet, helicopter tours, aircraft services and gifting each have their own place.
The expanded website builds on the earlier site I created for Cardinal Wings and connects that public information to a much larger set of purchasing and staff workflows. The expanded site went live on 10-14-2026, and the full experience store opened on 10-20-2026.
Exact screens, not mockups.
Direct browser captures of the live site at 1440 pixels. Nothing redrawn, nothing staged.
The work, piece by piece.
A website for several kinds of visitor
Training, rentals, aircraft services, tours and gifting each have a clear route into the business.
Original aircraft photography
My photographs of the aircraft and Bowman Field give the site a recognizable operation and setting.
An experience store
Twelve launch products with relevant options, a cart drawer, checkout and a customer account presentation.
A personal flight gift
Recipient, sender, message and choices to email now, email on a date, or print the certificate.
A separate dollar-value card
An amount-based gift product lets the recipient choose the experience they want.
Mission Control and Flights to fly
A focused staff workspace and six-state flight queue keep the work after payment visible.
Built for every screen it will meet.
12
products in the launch catalog
3
named-gift delivery choices
5
regional market guides
6
flight fulfillment states
A complete website around the way the business works.
Cardinal Wings now has a website that introduces the school, explains the training, shows the aircraft, sells experiences, and gives buyers a way to turn a flight into a personal gift. Behind those pages are the workflows for the next conversation: scheduling, weather holds, gift handling, inquiries and applications.
These are delivered features and launch counts. This page does not claim traffic, ranking, sales or revenue figures.
Seven decisions that shaped the build.
Give the experience itself.
Gifting is a central part of this build. On an experience page, the buyer can choose For myself or As a gift. The gift path asks who the flight is for, who it is from, and whether to include a personal message.
It then offers three delivery choices: email the certificate to the recipient now, email it on a chosen date, or print the certificate and give it in person. The selected experience and its options travel with the gift, and the certificate gives the recipient a redeemable code and a clear way to contact the front desk.
Give printing the same attention as email.
A gift often gets handed over at a birthday, at Christmas or across a dinner table. Someone choosing the print route does not need to know the recipient’s email address, so the form changes its requirements to match that choice.
The custom workflow covers the product form, validation, cart and order details, certificate presentation, delivery choices and the staff view of the gift. I built those pieces together so the gift stays recognizable throughout the journey. I wrote up the approach in selling experiences with WooCommerce.
Keep dollar-value gift cards as a separate choice.
Sometimes the buyer knows the amount they want to give but wants the recipient to choose the flight. That has its own product: amount selection, recipient and sender details, a message and a delivery date.
The website explains the distinction before purchase and links the current Purchase and Redemption Terms. The release also moved the public purchase routes from the former external gift service into the new website store, with historical gift records handled separately from new purchases.
Build a store around experiences.
The launch catalog contains six helicopter tours, five discovery flights and a dollar-value gift card. Tour products can offer passenger choices, while discovery flights offer the available lesson durations.
Photography-led product pages carry practical details and purchase terms into a consistent cart drawer, cart and checkout with card and PayPal payment options. Purchasing comes before scheduling: buying an experience does not reserve an aircraft or a time, and the site says so. It is the kind of WooCommerce development I do when a product is an experience rather than a box.
Give the front desk a workspace for the next step.
Behind the public site, I built Mission Control, a branded workspace arranged around the front desk’s work. Orders, inquiries, job applications, gift cards and experience gifts each have a clear destination.
The interface and the access role are separate parts of the implementation: a simplified menu helps someone work, and the role governs which parts of the site the staff account can use. Shown here as an interface preview with fictional records, captured during development.
Track a flight separately from its payment.
A paid order does not tell the desk whether a customer has flown. Flights to fly tracks that part of the work: Needs scheduling, Customer contacted, Scheduled, Weather hold, Flown and Cancelled, with a dated history of every change.
Experience gifts have a separate staff view, so a gift awaiting its recipient is not treated as a flight the buyer must schedule now. A workflow state describes the flight; it does not by itself record a refund. Interface preview with fictional records. More in tracking the experience after the payment. See also custom WordPress plugin development.
Give the content a structure that can grow.
The Logbook brings the questions people ask about learning to fly into an editorial library. It is a 15-article program released in stages; six articles were public when the store opened, with the others held for later release.
Five regional guides connect the school to Elizabethtown, Radcliff and Fort Knox; Lexington; Owensboro; Bowling Green; and Indianapolis, while keeping the training location clear: the operation is based at Bowman Field in Louisville. A careers page and application form give prospective instructors their own route, separate from customer inquiries.
Photograph the aircraft for the pages they belong on.
The aircraft photography is my work, shot at Bowman Field. The real aircraft and ramp give the website a specific setting and help visitors see the operation they are considering.
I designed the pages around that photography, with large images, navy and red accents, clear headings and distinct paths through the services. An aircraft page shows the machine being discussed, while training and rental pages give that imagery a practical context.
The same identity on a phone.
The homepage uses a video-led introduction on larger screens and a still image on phones. Navigation, contact choices and the gift form are laid out for a smaller screen.
What people ask about the Cardinal Wings build.
Can a customer buy a flight as a gift?
Yes. The experience products offer a gift path with a recipient, sender, optional message, and choices to email now, email on a chosen date, or print the certificate. A separate dollar-value gift card lets the recipient choose the experience.
Is the website a live booking calendar?
No. Purchasing and scheduling are separate. Customers buy online and arrange the flight with the front desk, taking aircraft, staff and weather into account.
Did you build the staff tools too?
Yes. Mission Control, Flights to fly and the experience-gift workflow are custom WordPress work developed alongside the public site and store.
Did you take the aircraft photographs?
Yes. I photographed the aircraft at Bowman Field and designed the website around that original imagery.
Can you build similar tools for another business?
Yes. The starting point is how your business handles a purchase or inquiry, including the work that follows it.
What this project used.
E-commerce solutions
An experience store with named gifts, a separate gift card and a checkout built for it.
Custom WordPress development
Mission Control, Flights to fly and the experience-gift workflow.
Integrations
The purchase, the gift and the front desk connected in one website.
Bring the website and the work behind it together.
Shaun Wilson Designs is a Louisville web design studio. Browse more website design examples, or see the WooCommerce work behind stores like this one.
Related reading: Selling experiences with WooCommerce and Track the experience after the payment.
The website and store screenshots are live captures of cardinalwingsaviation.com made on 10-20-2026. The Mission Control and Flights to fly images are interface previews with fictional records, captured during development; they do not show customer activity. The image at the top places the real homepage and gift-form captures in a browser and a phone.
Tell me what you are building.
One conversation, one builder, a clear next step. The person you brief is the person who does the work.
