Please Meet Capt. Paddy T Bear and Lucky are raising awareness and funds for the LauraLynn Children’s Hospice & Dogs Trust Ireland by flying all over Ireland, the UK, and beyond. During their travels, they will each be carrying a logbook to record all flight hours, the pilot in command, aircraft type, and registration. At the end of the challenge in January 2024, along with them, their logbook and a scrapbook of their adventures will be auctioned off to raise valuable funds for two worthy Irish charities. Capt Paddy T Bear will be donated to LauraLynn Children’s Hospice and Lucky to The Dogs Trust of Ireland. They are three months into the 12 month Aviation Ireland Challenge and so far they have flown with Aer Lingus, Emerald Airlines, British Airways & Qantas from Cork, Shannon, and Belfast to London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Boston, and even as far as Perth, Australia. They have even flown two full aerobatic routines with gyroscopic manoeuvres and just finished an incredible month of adventures with the Irish Air Corps. At present, they are in the UK having attended the Microlight Trade Show and they will spend two weeks with Ryanair in May flying all over Europe. We have been gifted a dedicated website (www.aviationireland.ie),
To donate, please see the links belowJustGiving for the Dogs Trust Ireland JustGiving for the LauraLynn Childrens Hospice
They also met Sam Ryder at 3Olympia on 18th March and Ray Kennedy from RTE news on 15th April.
We never expected the Aviation Ireland Challenge to take off (every pun intended) as it has and we have been inundated with requests to take Capt Paddy & Lucky flying with some very exciting plans ahead. We have been invited or attending the below events, airfields and air displays so far with more to be added:-
28th – 29th April 2023 Microlight Trade Show – Popham, UK
9th May 2023 Eurovision Semi Final (Ireland), Liverpool, UK
11th – 25th May Ryanair flights
26th May 2023 Brooke, Meet & Greet (TBC)
28th May 2023 Ballyboy Airfield Breakfast Fly-In, Co Meath, Ireland
8th June 2023 Capt Paddy & Lucky’s Teddy Bear Picnic, IAA HQ Dublin (TBC)
24th -25 th June 2023 Duxford Sumner Air Show, Cambridge, UK
July 2023 Harbour Place Shopping Centre, Mullingar, Co Westmeath (TBC)
29th -30 th July 2023 Bray Air Display, Co Wicklow, Ireland
5th August 2023 (TBC) Birr Air Display, Co Offaly, Ireland
Contact us aviationirelandchallenge@gmail.com
We have had an incredible reaction to their adventures and had some fantastic support across various media platforms including:
- Westmeath Examiner Article 1 Article 2
- Dublin Live Online
- Dublin South FM (The Marlon Show) – One our dedicated show and Interview
- Emerald Airlines Social Media Publicity
- Irish Aviation Authority Social Media Publicity (my employer)
- Irish Air Corps Social Media Publicity
- Aer Lingus Flight Time Magazine April 2023
- Microlight Flying (British Microlight Aircraft Association) April 2023
- ShannonSide Radio – The Joe Finnegan Show – Interview
- Squawk 7000 – Ireland’s number one aviation podcast (Bi-Weekly updates)
