It was a dream come true for a 101-year-old woman.
When she was in high school, she had the chance to fly with Amelia Earhart. On Saturday, through the AARP's "Wish of a Lifetime," she was able to take flight again for a special trip to the New England Air Museum.
Anne Fiyalka received a special tour of the museum's recently completely "New England Women in Aviation" exhibit.
Fiyalka even got the chance to sit in the museum's "Lockheed 10a Electra" aircraft - the sister plane flown by Earhart when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
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“We are probably as excited about hosting Anne as she is about getting her wish to fly,” said president and CEO of the museum, Stephanie Abrams.
She described the day she got to fly with Earhart.
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"So we couldn't talk in the plane, but we couldn't anyway. It was noisy in that plane. And I'll never forget the feeling I had when the wheels left the Earth," Fiyalka said.
"I never thought 86 years after I flew with Amelia Earhart I would be on Lockheed Electra," she continued.
That wasn't Fiyalka's only encounter with a plane this weekend. She boarded a Cessna at Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Bridgeport in the morning and flew to Bradley International Airport to visit the museum.
The mission of "Wish of a Lifetime" is “to shift the way society views and values our oldest generations” by fulfilling seniors’ dreams and sharing their stories to inspire people of all ages.
