A small chapter in Sedona history came to a close on Nov. 15 when Eric Brunner, owner of Sedona Air Tours, sold a red biplane that spent thousands of hours flying above the Sedona area.
Brunner sold the aircraft to Kermit Weeks, a prominent aircraft collector who owns an aviation park in central Florida called Fantasy of Flight.
Weeks flew the biplane, a replica of a 1930s era biplane produced by the Waco Aircraft Co., out of the Verde Valley last week. That was the beginning a five-day cross country flight to Florida in the biplane — at about 100 mph — that Weeks completed Nov. 20.
Brunner said the aircraft was the last of the biplanes he used to conduct Red Rock Biplane Tours, a biplane tour operation associated with Sedona Air Tours. According to Brunner, the red biplane arrived in Sedona on Christmas Eve in 1994. He estimated that he has personally flown it for over 10,000 hours.
The biplane has the word “Rides” painted in large letters on the bottom of the lower wings, and before the era of smartphones and instant information, those words brought many people up to Airport Mesa in search of the old-fashioned airplane.
“People had to go to the airport to find the plane,” Brunner said. “There’s a lot of romance to the biplane.”
While many appreciated the charm of the open-cockpit biplane, others might not miss the distinctive, low-pitched chugging of its radial engine, a factor, Brunner remarked, in his decision to sell the plane and not re-start the biplane tours.
One of the people who noticed the red biplane flying above Sedona over the years was Weeks, the new owner, who owns a home in Sedona and was married in the city in 2000. He said the idea of someday buying the red biplane entered his mind at the time of his marriage, when he saw Brunner’s red and yellow biplanes flying overhead, matching the red and yellow roses in his wedding ceremony.
Brunner said that recently a mutual friend reached out to him about selling the airplane, and Brunner was thrilled to discover the potential buyer was Weeks, who is well-known in the aviation world as a prolific collector and accomplished pilot.
According to Brunner, the red biplane has spent recent years sitting unflown in a hangar in Cottonwood.
“All airplanes have spirits in my book,” he said. “I wanted to see [the biplane] fly again.”
As a part of Weeks’ eclectic fleet of aircraft in Florida, the biplane is likely to continue flying, just not over Sedona anymore.
