A group of volunteer pilots in Gwinn gives Upper Peninsula kids their very first airplane ride at no cost, every summer. Here’s how to get your child in the air.
Free. Actually, Completely Free.
There’s a catch you keep waiting for. There isn’t one.
Every summer, a group of volunteer pilots in Gwinn takes Upper Peninsula kids up for their first airplane ride — and it doesn’t cost a single dollar.
They’re called the Young Eagles, run by EAA Chapter 850, the Lake Superior Chapter based at Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport. Any kid between 8 and 17 can climb into a small plane, buckle in next to a real pilot, and see the U.P. the way the eagles do.
No fee. No fine print. Just a free flight and a memory most kids never forget.
What The Flight Is Actually Like
The flights are short — usually around 15 to 20 minutes — but for a first-timer, that’s a lifetime.
The plane lifts off the runway, the ground drops away, and suddenly the whole central U.P. is laid out below: endless green forest, the long blue edge of Lake Superior, the roads and rooftops shrunk to toy size.
When they land, each kid walks away with more than the memory. The Young Eagles program gives every young flyer an official logbook, and their name gets entered into the world’s largest logbook, kept at the EAA museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin — where they can look themselves up years later and prove they were once an eagle.
For a lot of these kids, it’s the spark. The program was built in 1992 for exactly that reason, and it’s since put more than two million kids in the air.
The Pilots Who Make It Happen
Here’s the part that makes it a U.P. story.
Nobody’s getting paid. The pilots are local volunteers who cover the cost of the flights out of their own pockets — their planes, their fuel, their Saturday mornings — just to give a kid a shot at something bigger.
That’s the quiet U.P. way: people who fly, build, and fix planes in a hangar at Sawyer, deciding the best thing they can do with all of it is hand it to the next generation, free of charge.
How To Get Your Kid In The Air
The rallies run through the summer, generally on the third Saturday of each month, weather permitting, out of Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport in Gwinn — with some flights held at other central U.P. airfields.
To sign up, head to eaachapters.org, search for EAA Chapter 850, and find the next Young Eagles rally to register. You can also check the chapter’s Facebook page (EAA Chapter 850) for the latest dates and any weather changes.
A few things to know before you go: your child needs to be 8 to 17, a parent or guardian has to be there to sign the registration form, and dates can shift with the weather — so register ahead and keep an eye on the chapter’s page.
One Free Flight, One Big Spark
It’s easy to scroll past a story like this. Don’t.
Somewhere in the U.P. there’s a kid who’s going to take that flight this summer, look down at the forest and the big lake, and decide — right then — that they’re going to be a pilot. Or an engineer. Or just a person who knows the world is bigger than it looks from the ground.
That’s what a few Yooper volunteers are handing out, for free, one Saturday at a time. The least we can do is make sure every U.P. parent knows it’s there.
Did your kid take a Young Eagles flight — or are you planning to this summer? Tell us below, and tag a U.P. parent who needs to see this 👇
The featured image on this article is an AI-generated illustration. All facts are independently researched and sourced.
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