Sixty teams of 25 people each took turns pulling a FedEx A310 with a rope tied to the front of it to see who could pull it 12 feet in the least amount of time during the
Dulles Day Family Festival on Oct. 3. The annual event benefits Special Olympics Virginia.
“The Dulles Plane Pull started in 1992 with a handful of teams and has grown into a festival the entire community looks forward to every year,” says Christopher Browne, manager of Washington Dulles International (IAD). “We are proud to be the first Plane Pull event in the country, and to have raised more than $1.5M for Special Olympics Virginia over the years.”
For the third consecutive year, the Chesapeake, Va., Sheriff’s Office won the Plane Pull with a time of 5.898 seconds.
Teams donated a minimum of $1,000 to compete in the Plane Pull, with all of the money going to Special Olympics Virginia. There was also a competition for the teams who could raise the most money; Cisco Systems Inc. was the winner, with $24,060.
The Plane Pull is the main event of the festival, which also included a Kids Bus Pull, live music, car show, and military, civilian and World War II-era aircraft.
There was no cost to the more than 10,000 spectators who attended the event, unless they purchased food or entered their children in the Kids Bus Pull, an event similar to the Plane Pull but using a big, yellow bus; entry fee for that, which was for kids age 5 to 13, was $10.
