Airpark community at its finest

“Wanna go fly with me?” asks John Zielinski, who owns a Cessna 340 here at Pegasus Airpark in Queen City, Arizona. “You can take the controls!”

And the small boy, obviously weak and unwell, but stoic, offers a grin and his father helps get him into the airplane. They join a conga line of aircraft taking off on the airpark’s 5,000-foot-long runway. When they return and he is helped off the aircraft, the little boy flashes a rare grin and says, “My favorite part was driving the airplane. It felt like being a real pilot.”

Hope Kids Arizona is a Phoenix-area organization that for the past 10 years has brought sick children and their families to this gated desert community where pilots and their airplanes live in gracious homes and hangars in the Sonoran Desert. It’s a contrast between refined desert living and family angst that is made whole by the kindness and generosity of the Pegasus Airpark community. Everyone is equal here in their appreciation for life and the joy a simple airplane ride can provide.

“I threw the idea out 10 years ago and the concept was, We are so fortunate to be here. We have so many advantages. It was like, Let’s do something for a group that can’t do anything back. Just do something for somebody,” said Nelson Garrison, president of the Pegasus Airpark Flight Association. “Everybody comes out. Everybody. It’s a whole mix of the community,…everybody just shows up. We have a group that takes care of the cooking stuff, and a group that does crafts for the kids when they are not flying, and another group cleans up when we’re done.”

The event hosts 20 families. The pilots tried hosting the event with a larger group, but the day wasn’t as successful as when working with fewer families. There are about seven to 10 aircraft owners who offer to take the families flying. The cross-section of aircraft is a representation of the aircraft based at Pegasus. From Cubs to Citations and Pipers to Pilatus, the 185 homes here have every variety of aircraft behind their hangar doors.

Gracious living

And what homes are here. From palatial to stunning, tremendous to enormous, the homes at Pegasus Airpark are simply gorgeous. At one end is a $16 million complex with a 10,000-square-foot hangar, a kitchen the size of a football field, and 11 bathrooms. At the other end is a stunning Architectural Digest contender with a mini golf course and a spectacular view of the San Tan Mountains.

The hangars don’t disappoint, either. From a collection of nearly every model of Pitts biplanes (see “Cool Hangars,” February 2026 AOPA Pilot), to helicopters and Cessna Citations on gleaming polished concrete and epoxy floors, aircraft as well as humans live here very well indeed.

“The year 2010 was not a great year for real estate anywhere and you could have bought any lot in this place for super cheap,” said Garrison. “But it’s grown through that and turned into an incredible place. If it’s a runway, taxiway home it’s going to be two to two-and-a-half million, and the extreme would be the one down the way at 16 million, which is on two lots and has a hangar that most people could ever dream of.”

“Pegasus Airpark has many options,” said Garrison.

“There are hangars that run from T-hangars all the way up to 80-by-80s that you can live in here in the airpark. So, it’s kind of like, What’s your price point in aviation? We have everything from J–3 Cubs and Champs to CJ or Citation IIIs.”

Flying out

The Phoenix area is perfect for GA fliers, Garrison said.

“I can depart from here and in an hour and 20 minutes be on the West Coast. I can be at the ocean. I can head to the mountains. There is diversity in Arizona. People think it’s all just desert. Well, no. Every direction there are mountains. I go east, it’s mountains to 12,000 feet. I go north, it’s mountains to 12,000 feet. I go west, it’s the mountains of California,” he said. “If I go south, I end up in Mexico. We have a lot of flyable days. It’s just so diverse. It’s so much fun.”

The people in the flying community at Pegasus Airpark are also as diverse as the aircraft they fly.

“We have people who are middle of life, still working. We have aviation professionals, CFIs, former military, former airline pilots, current airline pilots,” Garrison said. “And then there’s the retirement community who wanted to be somewhere where they literally can walk to their hangar and pull their airplane out and go.”

Why live in an aviation community? “I would say there’s a common interest around aviation. Aviation is a small community when you think about the number of people nationwide or worldwide that do it. You run into people that you’ve met places all over,” Garrison said. “And so just that common bond of common interest. Just the common bond that’s amongst all the people that are here, it really is a fun community. We’re all here for the same reason: the fact that this place is an airpark, and everybody enjoys being here.”