PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — PlaneSense, a fractional aircraft ownership company, collected more than 7,000 pounds of food for the New Hampshire Food Bank, filling a Pilatus PC-12.
The food was recently flown to the Manchester Boston Regional Airport, where Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas, Chairman of the Pease Development Authority George Bald, and Executive Director of the Pease Development Authority Dave Mullen, were on hand to meet the aircraft full of food.
NH Food Bank executives and members of its advisory board were also on hand at Signature Aviation to gather the food for distribution.
Mayor Gatsas, and PlaneSense President and CEO George Antoniadis, who piloted the plane, helped to load the NH Food Bank vehicle with the non-perishables. The remainder of the food was brought by truck and delivered to the Food Bank.
This is the company’s second year flying a PC-12 full of food in support of the NH Food Bank. Last year’s donations totaled around 800 pounds of food, which provided over 600 meals. This year’s donations will provide over 5,800 meals.
According to Mel Gosselin, the Executive Director of the NH Food Bank, the food will be brought back to the Manchester facility and sorted into categories. It will then be placed into the NH Food Bank’s online ordering system and later dispersed accordingly to help feed over 140,000 people who are food insecure.
Antoniadis said that while filling an airplane — and in this case, needing “supplement lift” in the form of a truck to carry the excess food donations — was the initial goal, increasing the public’s exposure to the needs of the New Hampshire Food Bank was an equally important result of the holiday food drive.