A confident digital front door for flight training.
Cardinal Wings Aviation trains pilots and rents aircraft at historic Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky. Shaun Wilson Designs built the responsive website and shot the aircraft photography that runs through it, so the pictures were made for the pages and the pages were made for the people walking into the hangar for the first time.
Cardinal Wings Aviation
Bowman Field, Louisville, Kentucky
Flight training and aircraft rental
Web design, build, photography
Many ways to take flight, one clear place to start.
Cardinal Wings serves students taking a first discovery flight, career-focused pilots, aircraft renters, Cirrus owners and helicopter students. Every one of them arrives with a different question, and the website has to make those paths feel clear from the first screen while presenting the operation with the confidence and visual quality aviation customers expect.
The finished site pairs a focused service architecture and direct calls to action with original aircraft photography, so a visitor understands where to begin and what Cardinal Wings offers without a phone call, and then knows exactly which call to make.
Photography gives the design its lift.
The aircraft, the ramp and the tower are the real ones a student will see. Nothing stock.
Exact screens, not mockups.
These are direct browser captures of the live site at 1440 and 390 pixels. Nothing redrawn, nothing staged.
Aircraft photography from the shoot.
Shaun Wilson Designs created the aircraft photography used throughout the website: the real aircraft, the real ramp and the real Bowman Field sky.
The work, piece by piece.
Training pathways, organised
Private pilot, instrument and commercial ratings, instructor training, Cirrus transition training and helicopter instruction arranged so a first-time visitor is never overwhelmed and an experienced pilot can go deep.
The fleet, by use
Airplanes, Cirrus platforms and helicopters presented by training use and rental option, with the real aircraft photographed on the Cardinal Wings ramp.
Discovery flight, front and centre
A prominent discovery-flight path gives new pilots a welcoming first step, and every service page ends in a specific next action.
Original photography
Aircraft, training environment and the Bowman Field setting shot by Shaun Wilson Designs, so every page carries a strong sense of place and none of it is stock.
Responsive by design
Brand, message and primary calls to action stay visible on a phone; a mobile visitor can reach training details, aircraft information or a discovery-flight enquiry without losing the desktop impact.
Local positioning
Bowman Field and Louisville, Kentucky are part of the story on every page, for the people searching close to home.
Flight experiences, sold as gifts.
A flight school sells experiences, not products. The Cardinal Wings store puts flight experiences and gift cards in one catalogue, with photography-led product pages, a cart drawer, a full cart and checkout that all speak the same visual language.
Buying an experience does not reserve a date. The recipient calls the front desk when they are ready and the school finds them a day, a time and good weather. That is experience commerce, and the design is built around it rather than around a live availability calendar.
The distinction is part of the design, not small print.
Give the flight itself
On any experience the buyer chooses For myself or As a gift. The gift path asks for the recipient’s first name, the sender and a personal message, then offers three deliveries: email it now, email it on a chosen day, or print a certificate and give it in person.
Give a dollar value
A separate gift-card product with amount selection, recipient and message fields, branded artwork and a delivery date. The cart and checkout carry gift-card redemption, and a balance-check page closes the loop for the recipient.
Carry it through to paid
The gifted experience travels into the cart drawer, the cart summary and the order summary at checkout with its message intact, alongside guest checkout, express payment and coupon and gift-card fields.
From the gift form to the order summary.
What the recipient sees, and what the buyer sees on a phone.
Screens are from the development build, captured September 5, 2026, with fictional names and a sample certificate that cannot be redeemed. No order was placed and no gift was issued. Products, prices and launch details remain subject to client approval.
Built for every screen it will meet.
A website that reads like the hangar feels: capable and welcoming.
Cardinal Wings now presents a complicated set of services as one confident experience. Students find their path, renters find the fleet, and the discovery flight is never more than one tap away.
Because the same studio designed the site and shot the aircraft, the brand feels specific, credible and local rather than assembled from parts.
Built in Louisville, for Louisville and Southern Indiana.
Shaun Wilson Designs is a one-person web design and WordPress development studio in Louisville, Kentucky, working with businesses across Louisville and Southern Indiana: custom WordPress websites by a Louisville WordPress developer, custom WordPress plugins, WooCommerce stores, luxury web design for premium brands, website redesigns and WordPress recovery. See more of the work in the project portfolio.
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.
