Houston pilot receives volunteer pilot award
Press Release – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 22, 2025
SouthWings
Chelsea Easter, Director of Operations and Volunteer Pilot Engagement
chelsea@southwings.org
828-552-4907
At the organization’s annual gathering this month, Houston pilot Scott Humphries was honored with the inaugural SouthWings Lonestar Award.
SouthWings is a non profit organization that connects volunteer pilots with environmental initiatives that would benefit from a birds-eye-view. Humphries is one of 78 volunteer pilots stationed across the Southeastern US.
The SouthWings Lonestar Award recognizes a pilot from Texas for their outstanding contributions towards helping partners in that state protect their communities from environmental threats.
SouthWings expanded their operations into Texas in 2022 and Scott Humphries was the first pilot in Texas to join the organization that year. Scott earned his pilot’s license in 1992 and now holds a commercial certificate with instrument and multi-engine ratings. Currently, he most often flies a Beech Bonanza and a Piper Mirage, based at Houston Southwest Airport (AXH).
Scott was born in Sydney, Australia, and grew up in a small town outside of Houston. After college in Austin and law school in Boston, he married his law school sweetheart Stacy, and they have two boys, Jackson and Sam. Scott practiced commercial trial law with the boutique Houston law firm Gibbs & Bruns LLP for 25 years before retiring as the firm’s managing partner in 2020. He remains an active lawyer and arbitrator, part-time.
In the three years that Scott has been a SouthWings volunteer pilot, he has completed 21 flights carrying a total of 47 passengers and racking up 32+ hours of flying time. He has worked with SouthWings partners on a wide range of issues from watershed and wetland protection to environmental justice issues to holding polluters accountable. He has flown grassroots organizations, journalists, filmmakers, university researchers and more.
In addition to his work for SouthWings, he flies for a number of charitable organizations that provide medical and humanitarian transport, conservation flights, disaster relief, animal rescue, and aviation education. In 2020, Scott started Humphries Aviation LLC to fly commercial sightseeing tours and sunset flights in Houston, as well as to provide contract pilot and airplane ferry services. He serves as a representative of the FAASTeam, the FAA’s program to actively promote aviation safety, and writes on safety and other aviation topics for a variety of aviation periodicals. He chronicles his flying adventures at www.humphriesaviation.com.
“We could not have asked for a better volunteer pilot to get our coastal Texas program rolling. Scott is always ready to help however he can. His passengers, even those who have never been in a small plane before, appreciate his professionalism and the wonderful aviation experience he cheerfully provides,” said SouthWings Gulf Program Director, Virginia Richard. “Thanks to Scott, we've had several firsts as an organization, including supporting Spanish-language media coverage of pressing environmental justice issues, and have been able to serve even more frontline communities than before!”
SouthWings is a non-profit conservation organization that provides a network of volunteer pilots to advocate for the restoration and protection of ecosystems across the Southeast through flight. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, SouthWings operates in 16 states in collaboration with hundreds of partner organizations to enhance the work of the conservation and environmental justice movements through aerial perspectives.
SouthWings partners with conservation groups, community groups, media, and decision-makers to provide a unique perspective to better understand and solve pressing environmental issues in the Southeast. All flights are free of charge to the flight partner thanks to the generosity of the volunteer pilots, granting foundations, and individual donors.
To learn more about SouthWings, visit www.southwings.org.
