(Havre) – On September 9th, the North Central Hanger of the Montana Pilots Association (NCHMPA) will be holding their Air Fair at the Havre City-County Airfield. Willie Hurd the President of the NCHMPA and Tony Dolphay the manager of the Havre City-County Airfields talk about the upcoming event.
Willie: “Well, the flying airfare event is an opportunity for people to come to an airport. Normally you don’t have the advantage of coming out on the field where the planes are if you’ve ever flown commercial you know that you’re in a terminal there’s a big, barbed wire fence keeps you from getting onto the field, but we have a day where you can come out get right up close to the pilots and the planes. We serve a heck of a breakfast we call it the second-best breakfast you can ever get in any airport and it’s quite a menu pancakes, sausage, eggs, and biscuits and gravy and it’s a free will donation so whatever you think it’s worth you can throw us a few dollars and weather permitting we’re really excited to fly youth every year. So, under 18 years of age and tall enough to look out the window, we load up youth and take them out to give them an experience in the air.”
They go on to talk about the aerial activities happening during the event.
Hurd: “In addition to the basic part of it we often have different things like a candy drop, some years we drop ping-pong balls with numbers, and you drew the number and see who gets prizes, we’ve had little Paratroopers that we’ve thrown out of planes that come floating down for the kids. This year we do have a real special thing that we’ve never been able to do before we have two people here with their stunt aircraft who will be flying demonstration aerobatics, and this is a really exciting thing for us we just don’t normally get to have this kind of event. So, on top of the meal and the flights we have aerobatics.”
They continue by talking about the who the stunt pilots are.
Dolphay: “Brittany Lincoln and Craig Gifford are the two pilots that will be giving us a demonstration. Also we’re working with Max Hendricks hoping to get some RC aircraft up here to kinda get the younger kids really excited about maybe even getting into a little bit of RC aircraft stuff for beginners. Hopefully it’ll be a good day hopefully people will stick around.”
They go on by talking about the current status of local aviation.
Dolphay: “On the Local side we have daily flights from Havre to Billings and Billings to Havre. Our rider ship this year is going to be somewhere around that 42 – 44 hundred people to and fro which is quite respectable for this area the essential air service is getting utilized very well its not quite up to pre-covid levels but its building. People are tired of staying at home there more and more connecting flights all the time people are flying to Billings to go to different locations were seeing those number grow each month.”
Hurd: “In the past 18 years the activity of this airport has greatly increased. We’re showing something between 1 and 2 medical flights out of here every single day and if you happen to get an Amazon box with a smiley on it, it probably came in through this airport. So, if you’re getting Amazon, you’re using this airport too. ”
