The Dunkirk-Fredonia Rotary Club will host its 57th annual Fly-In Breakfast on Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon at the Chautauqua County Airport in Dunkirk at 3389 Middle Road.
The main sponsors of this year’s event are DFT Communications, Brooks-TLC Hospital System and Cattaraugus County Bank (CCB).
Rotary volunteers will serve breakfast in one of the hangars. The menu includes all-you-can-eat pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, coffee, decaf, juice, water, and milk. Tickets are available online at Simpletix: https://www.simpletix.com/e/dunkirk-fredonia-rotarys-57th-annual-fly-i-tickets-125089#smtx-click Tickets can also be purchased at the event.
Private aircraft pilots from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and beyond come to the event each year to have their planes seen up close and personal by some 1,200 guests. Experimental and antique planes are usually among those displayed. Organizers for the event explained that visiting pilots get to eat for a fee, and the cost for local residents is only $10 for adults and $5 for children 12 and under.
An arts and crafts vendor fair will be held in an adjacent hangar. Great Lakes Flight Center will offer discovery flights. A Cessna 152 (2 seat aircraft) and a Cessna 172 (4 seat aircraft). These flights will cost from $140/$170 for a half hour and $215/$255 for one hour. One individual will copilot the plane with a flight instructor with room for up to two additional passengers. The flight instructor will walk the guest through the steps to safely fly an aircraft while showing off the beauty of Lake Erie and Western New York.
The annual Fly-In Breakfast is the local Rotary Club’s most complex and involved project of the year. The co-chairs for the event are President Will Pekrul and Rotary Member Margie Dye.
The event’s proceeds will benefit local organizations and causes in our community. The proceeds also support high school scholarships at Dunkirk and Fredonia High Schools, as well as the Rotary Youth Exchange Program.