Provincetown Municipal Airport | Stinson SM-8A Detroiter
The Stinson Detroiter sightseeing plane. [Jim Wolf / Clive E. Driver Collection / Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum]
Outside the hangar. The sightseeing plane was owned by John C. Van Arsdale Sr. [Provincetown-Boston Airline Slide Show; John Van Arsdale, Producer / Provincetown Community TV / Vimeo 4983497]
Text last updated on 13 March 2017 | Meet “Willie.” This six-seat passenger airliner, constructed in 1930, served for many years in taxi-yellow livery as Provincetown’s sightseeing plane, operated by John C. Van Arsdale Sr. of the Provincetown-Boston Airline, who acquired it in 1954. After the demise of PBA, it came into the hands of the partners Barbara Gard and Gwen Bloomingdale, 13 Pilgrim Heights Road, who operated Willie Air Tours out of Provincetown in summer and Titusville, Fla, in winter. They were killed in 2001 off Iceland in the early stage of a round-the-world trip aboard their twin-engine Aero Commander. “Willie” is now owned by Bob Callary, Dave Walsh, and Dave Stetson, and is based in Naples, Fla. It is still airworthy.
Jane Frankel wrote on 11 February 2019: My family rented the Oaks [264B Bradford Street] every summer from about 1965 through 1972 from Arnold Dwyer, who had a hardware store in town. … For a while, it was rented by Provincetown-Boston Airline. A pilot named Howard lived there. One day he agreed to babysit me so my parents could go to the beach alone. He took me up in the yellow plane that was used for sightseeing, and we checked all the beaches until we found my parents and buzzed them.
¶ Republished on 5 January 2024.