Second Congressional Fly-In Sponsored By Rep. Sam Graves
Some 120 aircraft flew in Saturday for the second annual
Congressional Fly-In, sponsored by Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) at Gould
Peterson Municipal Airport (K57) in Tarkio, Missouri, in the
extreme northwest corner of the state.
"We wanted to emphasize the importance of this airport to the
community," said Rep. Graves.
And that was the theme repeated in AOPA President Phil Boyer's
short address. "This airport is an economic engine for this area,
generating jobs and commerce," said Boyer.
He said that K57 was the area's link to the nation's air
transportation. Pointing to a Cirrus parked on the ramp, Boyer
said, "Every day, people are using single-engine aircraft like the
one behind you to travel everywhere in the country. Salespeople,
for example, can do more in a day of personal flying than they
could in several days on the airlines. This is real-time, on-demand
personal transportation, available to you today."
More than 1,000 people attended the fly-in; about two-thirds
were local townspeople. And Boyer spent some time talking to Tarkio
Mayor Nick White to further promote the value of the airport.
"We like to say 'a mile of highway gets you one mile, a mile of
runway gets you anywhere,'" said Boyer. Remarking on the 3,700-foot
runway at K57, he said, "In this case, less than a mile of runway
gets you anywhere. And doing it in a personal aircraft sure beats
the hour and a half drive to Kansas City or Omaha to stand in line
for security before boarding an airliner that will take you to only
a handful of other airports."
He noted what a pleasure it was for him to fly into a real,
grass-roots kind of working airport and escape the hot air of
Washington.
The military added some excitement to the events with flyovers
by an F-15 (131st Tactical Fighter Wing, St. Louis), RC-135 (338th
Combat Training Squadron, Offutt AFB, Nebraska), A-10 (442nd
Fighter Wing, Whiteman AFB, Missouri), C-130 (139th Airlift Wing,
St. Joseph, Missouri), an Apache helicopter demonstration (135th
Aviation Regiment, Whiteman AFB), and a parachute demonstration by
the Silver Wings Command Exhibition Parachute Team out of Fort
Benning, Georgia. Most of the aircraft were flown by military
reserve personnel, many of them local residents, and some of them
returning from duty in active war zones.