EAA hosted a breakfast this morning to thank the volunteers who have provided more than 2.5 million Young Eagles flights. Started in 1992, the program aims to introduce young people to aviation through free introductory flights from volunteer pilots across the country. Program Manager David Leiting announced that, thanks to a pre-AirVenture push, the goal of reaching 2.5 million flights before the show came in just under the wire with a total of 2,500,002 flights as of Sunday, July 19.
Rick Larsen, EAA’s Vice President for Communities and Member Programming, highlighted the many thousands of adults now part of the aviation community thanks to the spark that first ignited during their Young Eagles flights as children, with the hope to ignite that same spark in thousands more in the years to come.
