It’s 8 A.M. Saturday, and a large group of pilots gathers beneath “The Tree” at Spruce Creek Fly-In (7FL6). Keith Phillips, the leader of the weekly Gaggle Flight, provides the formation briefing. Up to 80 pilots attend the briefing, but they don’t all fly. “If it’s a nice day, we’ll have about 30 to 40 airplanes,” Phillips says.
The weekly tradition started in the mid-’80s when Phillips suggested he and a few friends fly in formation to their favorite breakfast spot. “I did a basic formation briefing,” he says, and sketched their positions on the back of a napkin. During the requisite debrief, Phillips says he made the mistake of saying, “That was the damnedest gaggle that I’ve ever flown in.” To his chagrin, the “gaggle” moniker stuck. “It’s kind of demeaning. But it’s one of those things that got away. You can’t get it back,” he says. Today, the Spruce Creek Gaggle Flight has about 100 members. The Gaggle frequently performs fly-overs for Little League opening days, veterans’ events, honor flights, and city festivals—like Daytona Beach Jeep Week—and has been recognized with multiple proclamations.
