All For Fun
It’s all about putting a smile of the faces of kids who often don’t have much to smile about. Australian pilots and owners are bringing happiness into the lives of children and their families who face a serious illness or extreme adversity, and the movement is growing beyond all expectations.
It’s a once-a-year event. FunFlight Australia, a non-profit organisation set up especially for the purpose, arranges fun flights for these children in co-operation with local aero clubs and owner/pilots, and the whole operation is conducted with great care and underlying professionalism.
The first FunFlight was conceived during a cup-of-coffee chat between two Melbourne businessmen: lets get a few aircraft together to fly ten of fifteen children with cancer. Michel Verheem doesn’t fly himself, so he asked his friend Michael Loccisano who flies his own Bonanza and is an Angel Flight pilot, what he thought of the idea. Michael reckoned it sounded a good one.
The pair’s enthusiasm spread quickly. Richard Ogilvie, an other Angel Flight pilot and Peninsula Aero Club member, heard of the idea and went to his club’s Social Committee and asked: “Is there anything we can do as an aero club?”
He rang Michel a couple of days later and asked “would he mind if the club organised something at Tyabb airport”
Michel recalls: “I think it was only five weeks later that we had 48 or so aircraft and 130 kids, and there was this mini-airshow organised by the guys in Tyabb. We had people like (the late) Pitt Bormann, the Police helicopter came in, there were parachutists, and it was such a fantastic day! The organising committee came together to celebrate that afterwards, and we were all about to go our separate ways, when somebody said ‘what are we going to do next year then?’
“Everybody put their hands up and it was then that we decided to make it an official registered charity. Professional services giant KPMG and law firm Allens Arthur Robinson organised the whole setup of an official registered charity on a pro bono basis, and we were away!
“A number of corporate entities have now also come on board, including, Pitcher Partners (the accountants who are our auditors), Allianz, who assisted with the insurance last year, QBE, who did it this year, Shell and AirBP, who donated fuel and give a discount for the rest, and a large number of smaller organisations that mostly donate goods and services.
“We’ve been really lucky. In the first year we received $130,000 in a donation from the estate of Paul Burgess, via his brother Jon, a member of the Peninsular Aero Club. He thought it was such a great event that this year he donated another $120,000. We haven’t had to go out and plead for donations and the contributions that come from organisations such as QBE in this way, it’s huge! Basically QBE is saying ‘don’t worry about any of your insurances, if anything happens, we’ll cover it.’ If we’d had to purchase that cover it would have cost a huge amount of money.”
Interaction with the children’s charities has been mutually rewarding. These include Starlight Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, Camp Quality, Very Special Kids and Heartkids; each of which is dedicated to similar goals and welcomes FunFlight as another innovative option.
It’s now an annual event, scheduled on the second Sunday of November. On Sunday November 8 AviationAdvertiser went along to see how it all comes together. As members of the organising committee, which is made up of just half a dozen busy people, Michael and Michel visited three separate Victorian operations; at Wangaratta, Echuca and Bendigo. At each location aero club members and other volunteers had arranged refreshments of various kinds including barbecues, people-handling, event management, ramp safety, weight calculations, boarding passes, and there were plenty of enthusiastic supporters.
Michel explains how the movement has grown:
“We like to make this available for young people who could use a bit of a boost. Last year was the first national event and fun flights were done in Melbourne, Lilydale, Latrobe Valley, Launceston, Perth, Rockhampton, Bankstown, and Amberley where the RAAF took it on. We had about 900 kids and their families.
“This year we’ve added these three local aero clubs – Wangaratta, Echuca and Bendigo, but also Horsham, Goolwa (with the Aldinga Aero Club), The Royal Queensland Aero Club at Archerfield, and even the Salvation Army’s Flying Padre in Darwin is doing it now. So it’s growing, and we think it will grow more – nationally, and perhaps internationally! We’re getting more pilots and more aero clubs who want to be involved, and it’s being refined as we go along. We had some things we thought would work but didn’t work, and some things we didn’t think would work, worked very well. We are still learning how to organise this and as you can see around you it’s a good day. There have been about 320 kids today just at these three locations – and close to 1200 nation wide!.”
Getting others involved is one of FunFlight’s skills, as Michel explains: “We think it’s important that the local club takes ownership, and that they involve their own local community – the local aero club, service clubs, and anyone else who cares to contribute. Other than taking the kids with their family flying, there’s no particular format for the day, and it’s left up to the local aero club at each location to put the event together. That may include other fun activities, a barbecue, and anything else that’s available and comes to mind. For example at Wangaratta, just in case there weren’t enough aircraft seats, the local Vintage Car Club and the Ulysses Motorcycle Club were both on hand to fill the gaps.”
Safety, of course, is top priority. QBE, which provides all the insurances, covers all the passengers, volunteers, aero clubs and FunFlight itself. Aircraft weight sheets are prepared, and there are watchful safety-jacketed people around to keep an eye open for possible hazards.
Criteria for the pilots are the same as for Angel Flight; a minimum of 250 hours in command, and aero club oversight plays a part in excluding the occasional pilot, member or not, who may be identified by the well-known benchmark: “Would I let my kids get in his aircraft even though he’s got plenty of hours?”
And they’re not running out of ideas, says Michel: “We’ve been approached by the Variety Club, the children’s charity – who’ve organised a “car bash” every year where all the cars go on a rally for a week. Every car pays an entry fee of $2,000, and every entry also has to do a minimum of $8,000 fund raising. They pass through spectacular country and in many towns they stop to support Special Needs Children with much needed equipment, services and
life experiences.
“They asked if we’d like to partner with them to organise the first ever Variety air rally. It’ll be called the FunFlight Variety Air Bash, where we’ll spend a week flying from Mildura through the outback to Arkaroola, William Creek, Woomera, Mnt Ive, the wine country, Port Augusta, and back to Mildura, fund raising for Variety and Fun Flight. A considerable number of aircraft have entered already, so that’s one thing happening next year.”
So is a lot more. The organisation wants to grow National FunFlight day, with more aero clubs and more local communities involved:
“We want to create smaller and more local activities during the year allowing charity organisations to call on a network of pilots and aero clubs to help them create a smile-filled event for their members.
“Think about a Service Club that wants to organise an event for a local hospital. They can call on FunFlight to organise a few local joy flights for the sick children. The same with a charity that wants to fulfil a wish of one of its members to go flying. FunFlight can organise that too.
“And then, to go international: FunFlight passionately believes that an international FunFlight event is achievable. Our vision is to create ‘FunFlight Smiles Around The World’.
For this to happen, we’re actively seeking contact with organisations that either already organise similar activities in Australia, or that are interested in partnering with FunFlight to create this amazing possibility in other countries.
AviationAdvertiser’s congratulations and best wishes to everybody involved in this generous initiative.
Everyone who can get on board this should seriously think about it. It was the most satisfying thing I have ever done with an aeroplane. In Victoria we also flew children from families who had lost everything on Black Saturday.
Maurice Waugh