Children on Manchester Airport charity flight search the sky for Santa

An annual charity flight from Manchester Airport took more than 120 local children on a magical journey to find Father Christmas.

Childflight, a North-West children’s charity which provides flights and holidays for children who are unwell or living in challenging circumstances, teamed up with Manchester Airport and TUI to operate the special ‘Search for Santa’ experience on Wednesday this week.

The children, aged between five and 11, were taken on a TUI aircraft, leaving Manchester and flying over the snow-capped peaks of North Wales – doubling for the North Pole. They were entertained on board by volunteers, including airport colleagues in full costume as Santa’s elves, who had volunteered their time to take part.

Midway through the flight, the wings of the plane gently tipped as though a sleigh had touched down on top of the aircraft – before St Nicholas himself appeared when the plane landed in Manchester to hand out gifts.

Stephen Sefton, Chair of Childflight, said: “Myself and the Childflight team are happy to be able to provide the annual Santa Flight for socially deserving children. We are grateful for the donations to Childflight via the collection globes at Manchester Airport which fund the Santa Flight and towards our other activities.”

Robert Pattison, Head of Community Engagement at Manchester Airport, said: “We are proud to have supported Childflight with the Search for Santa experience again this year, alongside our airline partner TUI. This has become something of a festive tradition, but each of the children on board were experiencing it for the first time, and I know the colleagues who take part never get tired of seeing those young people’s joyous reactions when Santa appears.

“Christmas is a special time of year for our passengers, our colleagues and our local communities and it’s important to us that we continue to bring the magic of Christmas to them – not just through this fantastic initiative, but also through things like our Giftmas campaign, where colleagues donate small gifts which are wrapped and filled into stockings for children in some of Greater Manchester’s most disadvantaged areas. I’m very grateful to every colleague who has donated time or gifts this year to help us spread some Christmas cheer.”

Alison Freeman TUI Cabin Manager said: “The Search for Santa flight is a really magical experience that we love to be involved with. The whole crew find it so rewarding being able to bring some festive cheer to these families and we love seeing the excitement on the children’s faces throughout the entire flight. Our team went above and beyond to make sure every part of the search for Santa was really special for the children and families.”