News Archive

---

Smiling Wings Day - Cranfield Airport, Cranfield, Bedfordshire 11 July 2009

Pilots save the day!

As the day approached the lack of serviceable aircraft and a bad weather report looked like the event would have to be cancelled. A few days before, however, a kind gentleman offered the services of his own 4 seat aircraft and TA Aviation, who was hosting the day with Aviation Without Borders (AWB), were able to provide one 2 seat aircraft. The weather forecast also improved and in the end the day went ahead as planned.

Invited to be our gests for the day were 10 children from the Families United Network (F.U.N.) plus their siblings, parents and relatives, making a group of 23. With the pilots were also four AWB trustees and two volunteers, one of whom was a pilot, who helped out by flying some of the children.

On the day the local weather at 7am was bad with low cloud, drizzle and fog but by the time the welcome and preliminaries were over the cloud had lifted sufficiently to allow the flying to begin. After an excellent buffet lunch, which was served as the flying progressed, a beautiful afternoon emerged with sunshine and a partly cloudy sky and, by 4pm, everyone had flown.

With good people and more than a little luck the decision to proceed had been vindicated and all the children, and their mums and dads as well, had a wonderful day out. Amongst the smiles one dad commented that 'the children had had the best day of their lives'.

A good day indeed!

« BACK