Article

2020 Unofficial Fly-in Review

Oct 30, 2020

 

It’s snowing here in southern New Hampshire! That pretty much signals the end of the flying season for this year. Pilots will still fly when the weather cooperates but things will surely slow down. Covid 19 brought an end to any possibilities for our airports to hold their fly ins, Wings and Wheels, and other activities. Thankfully a few of our usual haunts had restaurants with outside seating and they likely saw the most activity. Surely 2021 will be a better year!

I think this would be a good time to review our unofficial fly ins and to look forward to next year’s flying season. Here are the numbers. We had seven unofficial fly ins in 2020. The largest fly in (KEEN) had 29 planes show up and was a huge success! A combination of a good airport, good FBO and a really nice on field restaurant! The smallest fly in had only three planes. The temperatures that day were in the mid-nineties and I think most pilots opted to stay home. We will do better next year! The average fly in had 15 planes show up. Not bad for our first attempt to organize these events, but I think and hope we can do better next year.

All our events were on short notice and were held during the week. We were looking for perfect flying days to allow more people to attend. Warm weather, light winds and sunshine was the order of the day. While this worked for a large segment of our membership, it left out a number of members that are younger and still working. We will definitely want to have additional fly ins over the weekends next year so the people providing our social security checks can join us!! Maybe we should buy their breakfast! If a Covid vaccine arrives soon and is effective we could consider opening the fly ins to those airport restaurants that only have inside seating, Orange, MA, Limington, ME and, of course, Laconia. We could also consider longer runs to places like Katama airfield on Martha’s Vineyard and even Basin Harbor in Vermont. These longer runs would probably be better for our weekend fly ins!

I do not profess to being a tour guide and would appreciate hearing from any of our members who could contribute good ideas on how to improve flying for 2021. We are ending the year with a little over 500 members and again I want to thank all of you for joining our group and helping us protect OUR FREEDOM TO FLY!

About

The New Hampshire Pilots Association is an organization of pilots and aviation supporters dedicated to the furtherance and enhancement of general aviation interests in the state of New Hampshire. 

Contact

New Hampshire Pilots Association

Address:
835 Central Ave. Suite 110, Dover, NH 03820

E-mail:
chiefpilot.nhpa@gmail.com