Armed with the flexibility of your own plane, you’ll want to venture farther afield in terms of where you go and what you do.

  • funplacestofly.com. Crowd-sourced list of airports with good attractions on or near the field. I recommend plugging in your home airport, and systematically going through the list of everything within a few hundred miles. Every activity I’ve done from this site has been good.
  • socialflight.com. This caters more to aviation events. The data tends to be a little sketchy, so always contact the event organizer before you go to confirm time and location.
  • Pilot’s & Paws. This charity provides animal transport. An FBO would never let you use a plane for this, but that no longer applies to you! Your plane will get dirty, but if you like animals and/or tax-deductible flights this is a good way to build hours.
  • Angel Flight. They arrange non-emergency medical transport. The pilot requirements are relatively steep: IFR current + 250PIC. Note that technically this is a collection of individual charities, so you’ll need to look up the right Angel Flight variant for your area (e. g. Angel Flight West for CA, Angel Flight Georgia, etc.).
  • EAA Eagle Flights. This is a great opportunity if you’re passionate about attracting people to general aviation. The time commitment can be as high or low as you want, and the pilot requirements are low. The impacts, however, are huge: Children and adults who take an Eagle Flight are far likelier to become pilots down the line.
  • AOPA Flyins. The AOPA is expanding their scope; 2017 will have 4 different locations. That means everyone in the continental US should be within a several hour flight of at least one 2-day fun-filled plane extravaganza. Each fly-in has numerous vendor booths (with steep discounts), seminars on all matters aviation, and passable carnival food.