The North Pole welcomed visitors from Guam on Friday afternoon, with United Airlines sponsoring 34 kids on a flight to meet Santa Claus as part of its 10th annual Fantasy Flight.
Students from the J.Q. San Miguel Elementary School and C.L. Taitano Elementary School special education resource classes, along with two kids sponsored by the Make-A-Wish Foundation Guam and CNMI boarded a plane at A. B. Won Pat International Airport.
After taxiing down the runway and taking off, it only took them a little over an hour to make it all the way to the North Pole—which happened to look a lot like the United Hangar in Tiyan.
Dozens of Santa’s elves were there to meet the kids as they stepped off the aircraft boarding steps with their parents and loved ones.
“We had a special conversation with Santa Claus,” United’s Sam Shinohara, the “chief elf” for this year’s visit, told the crowd.
“We told him that all of you guys are from a tropical island and probably didn’t have the right clothing to experience the North Pole. So he turned up the heat,” Shinohara said.
Festivities opened with a special show from Super American Circus, popcorn and cotton candy, and a round of games before the big man himself made an appearance.
Santa Claus stopped by hauling a present for every kid, and everyone got a chance to take a picture to prove that they had, in fact, been to the North Pole.
The entire Fantasy Flight production is put together by United employees with the help of volunteers, says United station operation center and below the wing manager Benny Barcinas, who was in charge of organizing this year’s event.
It’s the tenth year that United Guam has hosted the Fantasy Flight, said Barcinas, whose been involved since the first.
“I’m really just excited to see the kids smiling faces. Really, that’s why we do it, there’s a lot of kids that haven’t been on a plane before, so seeing them just excited makes us excited,” Barcinas said.
Every department was represented in putting the production on, “we’re all here for the kids,” Barcinas said.
Even Santa Claus was a United employee, who Barcinas says works as a technician in the daytime.
United’s Shinohara said that of the 360 locations United services, just 13 cities participate in the Fantasy Flight each Christmas, and Guam is one of them.
And with United now partnering with the Make-A-Wish Foundation globally, Make-A-Wish kids now get seats on the flight every year, says Make-A-Wish Guam board member Leslie Leon Guerrero.
It’s a special treat, and you can see the excitement on the kids’ faces once the airplane gets off the ground, she said.
“They’re so loud and like excited, and then the moment we lift off, it’s like dead silence,” Leon Guerrero said.