TOUCH THE SKY, at Gloucester: [L-R] Dad Terry and Mum Tracey with Misha and her best friend Tipi; Robert; Joshua with Mum Lyuda and brother Jonathan.  Paul from Ufosa Sponsors Aeros Flight Training is there too.

Ufosa’s Touch The Sky Programme for the UK is helping to lift the spirits of seriously unwell, disabled and terminally ill children and young people and their families.

Ufosa gives the children and their parents a break from everyday life by taking them up into the air on free flights in a light aircraft - and what young person hasn’t wanted to fly?!

It's not just a sight-seing flight - the kids learn a little about flying and then get a chance to pilot the aircraft with Robert, turning, climbing and descending the plane, and so have a real flying experience.

The Programme started with 6 flying clubs as Ufosa Sponsors, each of whom had kindly donated their aircraft time to our event.  The clubs inolved in were:

Tropair Services, at Biggin Hill Airport, Kent;

Fairoaks Flight Centre (Synergy Aviation), at Fairoaks Airport, Chobham, Surrey;

Oxford Aviation Academy, Oxford Airport, Kidlington, Oxon;

Aeros Flight Training, Gloucestershire Airport, Cheltenham, Gloucs;

Herefordshire Aero Club, Shobdon Airfield, Shobdon, Herefordshire; and

Shropshire Aero Club, Sleap Aerodrome, Harmer Hill, Shropshire.

Touch The Sky was also Sponsored by Pilot Magazine, which not only printed a 3-page article on Ufosa and the event but also sent Deputy Editor Dan Tye along to join Ufosa staff on the final day of the 35-day event - the ascent up Mount Snowdon in Wales.  (Luckily, Dan was a bit of a mountaineer anyway...!)

Snowdon: Robert celebrates with Dan Tye, Deputy Editor of Ufosa Sponsors Pilot Magazine, at the top of Mount Snowdon.

Now Ufosa is extending Touch The Sky nationally. We’re aiming to take 100 children and their families up into the skies at 50 UK airports in May-Jul 2012.

We're asking local pilots to volunteer their time too with Robert, and the offers for TTS 2012 are coming in.

"Our main job then is to find the children who need our help, get them and their parents to the airfield and make it a really good day.  

“Putting a smile on a child is what Ufosa and Touch The Sky - and Walk To Read in South Africa - are all about," says Robert. "I think that smile is worth a lot."  

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