Spreading Good Cheer

One Saturday every December in Michigan hundreds of pilots and airplanes brave the elements and come together for a purpose that extends beyond flying. They carry thousands of donated presents to foster children all over the state in a marvel of logistics, goodwill, and in the spirit of giving back.

Operation Good Cheer is an entirely volunteer-run gift-giving program from Child and Family Services of Michigan. Roughly 13,000 children are in the state’s foster care program, and for decades pilots have organized, donated, and delivered gifts to as many as they can in one day.

Most years you can find longtime Twin Commander pilot John DeCarli pitching in. DeCarli has been flying gifts for the organization for about 16 years. He started in a personally owned 172 he used to commute from his home in northern Michigan to Pontiac, where he was based. Back then he could take a few presents anywhere there weren’t icing conditions.

An offhanded remark to the owner of the Twin Commander he was flying for really ramped up the support. Now the owner and his wife are supporting 10 kids a year, personally purchasing and wrapping 40 presents.

L to R: Glen Schlak, copilot, and Dean Greenblatt, owner of 840 in background.

The operation is a logistical marvel. All year a group of volunteers plan the event, solicit donations and gift-givers, and put the word out to pilots and trucking companies to be ready to play Santa. Then on the first Friday in December donors drop off the presents at a designated site, which are then trucked to Pentastar Aviation at the Oakland County International Airport in Waterford, Michigan. There, more volunteers unload and sort the gifts based on where in the state they are headed. That’s when the airplanes get involved.

On Saturday more than 250 pilots fly in to Oakland County. They are assigned a destination, volunteers load the presents, and then they fly off. At the destination airport yet more volunteers unload the presents and deliver them to the kids.

In 2019 more than 7,000 kids received multiple presents as a result of these efforts, and many pilots made multiple trips in order to deliver them. DeCarli was one of them, flying his current owner’s 840. “It’s one of the nicer Commanders I’ve ever flown,” he said. That’s saying something for someone who can count 22 different Commander serial numbers in his logbook. His current owner started with a 690A, then moved to a 900, a 1000, and finally to the latest 840.

Because of the owner’s medical issues DeCarli said the airplane only flew about 80 hours last year, and many of those hours were in support of Operation Good Cheer. The airplane is based in Michigan in the summer, and Florida in the winter. The owner asked DeCarli to fly the airplane from Florida to Michigan solely to support Operation Good Cheer. He made the trip to Oakland County, and then took a load of toys to the upper west side of the state. They stripped out the seats in order to fit more presents. “Once you do that you can fit quite a few bikes inside,” he said. At the time DeCarli was bringing a copilot up to speed on the airplane. He’s a maintenance technician and pilot he met during an earlier AOG situation in Michigan. The twist? He’s also a former foster child who benefited from the program. DeCarli said he was all smiles. “He was in his element.”

Even though the pilots don’t get to see the kids’ faces when they open the gifts, the welcome they receive at the airport is special. There’s always a massive spread of food, the community comes out to watch, and local kids help unload the gifts. “When those kids see the airplane come in with all the gifts, it’s just non-stop smiles,” DeCarli said. “You come back after that really in the spirit of the season.”

Like most things, the coronavirus required a change of plans in 2020. But the show went on. Instead of smashing the logistics into a few days, organizers spread the gift gathering and sorting over multiple weeks, using a nearby warehouse instead of Pentastar’s hangars. And trucks took most presents around the state, although airplanes did play a part. The Upper Peninsula is a long way around by road, but airplanes made the trip quicker.

Now in its fiftieth year, Operation Good Cheer continues to grow as more gifts are donated and wrapped and more pilots fly them to deserving kids. “It’s one special day out of the year you’re not flying for one particular person, you’re doing a flight for an entire group of people with a special purpose,” DeCarli said.