It's one of those flyboy rituals — when student pilots take their first solo flights, their instructors design a shirt commemorating the day and it usually winds up on display. For the Herrmanns, wall space ran out long ago, so they started pinning them to the ceiling.

"We're actually trying to find the owners of them so they can take them," said Chuck Herrmann, who opened the doors to the school 26 years ago at what is now McCarran International Airport.

Since then, the school has moved to North Las Vegas and, finally, Henderson Executive Airport, where hundreds of students have paid to learn how to fly. Herrmann's graduates have found work at Southwest, Continental, Frontier and Hawaiian Air.

But Sunday, that all comes to an end as Desert Southwest and the flight school closes its doors. Clark County, on track to modernizing the airport with new facilities, including a yet-to-open terminal building, is set to bulldoze old structures that don't meet modern standards and the flight school is in one of them.

"We told him a long time ago that the building had to be torn down and he'd get a minimum of three years' notice," said Randy Walker, director of the Clark County Department of Aviation. "He actually got an extra year out of it."

The county is eager to draw general aviation traffic away from McCarran to extend the capacity of the nation's fifth-busiest airport. Moving small planes and private jets to Henderson and North Las Vegas opens landing and take-off slots to commercial jets filled with tourists that keep Southern Nevada's economy humming.

Herrmann is all too familiar with the reasoning behind the move and admits he didn't have a plan for when the red tags arrived. The biggest problem, he said, was the cost of relocating — his mom-and-pop flight school, after paying 10 employees, the expense of maintaining a fleet of 12 aircraft and crushing cost of fuel, only made about $500 last year.

Henderson Executive Airport has been a work in progress since the county acquired it from a private family.

"When we bought it, there was no recognizable standard in place for utilities, the runway and for many of the buildings," Walker said. "Anytime you go from old dilapidated and crummy to new, it's going to cost something. We've given tenants at the airport the opportunity to lease something new."

Desert Southwest Airlines will close because of the planned demolition of Henderson Executive Airport's old terminal, north tower and accompanying buildings, seen here through the window of an executive jet parked at the airport on Monday. Photo by Tiffany Brown

When Herrmann realized he wasn't going to be able to afford a new building at the airport, he went to some other sources. A deal with another operator at the airport fell through, leaving him with no options. Options at the North Las Vegas and Boulder City airports also were out of financial reach.

Now, Herrmann and his wife of 46 years, who handles the paperwork for flight school, will simply retire, but he'll still try to maintain a level of income that will sustain his love for flying.

The Herrmanns met while in the Civil Air Patrol in Wichita, Kan., and were together when Chuck served as a mechanic on F-100 jets at Nellis Air Force Base in the early 1960s.

He worked for Timet in Henderson, but never grew tired of aviation, especially since his father helped build B-17s and B-29s at Boeing's Wichita plant.

Today, Herrmann is working toward closing down the school and will give lessons right up to the last day for the 50 to 75 students he has left. The school has arranged for students, who pay more than $10,000 to be trained, to pick up where they've left off at schools at North Las Vegas or Boulder City since there no longer will be a flight school at Henderson.

In fact, there's only one other business based at the Henderson airport — King Airelines, which offers Grand Canyon air tours from there.

Sunglasses and a headset await a Desert Southwest Airlines student on Monday at Henderson Executive Airport. Clark County is eager to draw general aviation traffic away from McCarran International Aiport and to the Henderson airport. Photo by Tiffany Brown

Then, he'll unplug the flight simulators he has and donate them to the Community College of Southern Nevada.

Students are saddened by the departure of the school.

"I live 10 minutes away from the airport, so it was really convenient for me," said Allen Condit, a software engineer at UNLV who had his first solo flight last week. "I could get a lesson in before work."

Condit feels losing Desert Southwest and the plan to attract more corporate jets to the Henderson airport could backfire against the county if the additional jet traffic disrupts nearby neighborhoods.

"One of the things the county has been able to rely on is that the airport is home to companies that employ people locally," Condit said. "Now that there will be only one company there, they don't have that argument if there's a big blow-up from the neighborhood about airport noise.

"I understand about the traffic situation at McCarran, but it's not cause to be forcing the little guys out of business from county-run and taxpayer-supported airports," he said.

Herrmann said he doesn't want to be involved in any fray with the county or the airport, but is clearly disappointed that the school is closing.

"It's a combination of circumstances that caught up with us," he said. "But now, we're hitting a whole bunch of days that really suck."