Santa Claus to visit Delaware Air Guard families and Airmen Thursday morning Dec. 20, 2007

Delaware Air National Guard
Headquarters, 166th Airlift Wing
2600 Spruance Drive
New Castle, DE 19720-1615 

Contact: Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Matwey
Public Affairs Specialist, 166th Airlift Wing
Cell 302-593-2126, or office 302-323-3369
E-mail: Benjamin.Matwey@denewc.ang.af.mil
Release No. 2007-12-002 [corrected Release No.]
December 19, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW CASTLE, DE - The Delaware Air National Guard Command Post just received priority message traffic via the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, that tomorrow morning, Thursday, December 20, the air base in New Castle will receive a visit from Santa Claus.

Each year Santa performs a "Survey of the Skies" to ensure Santa and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer are satisfied with their planned sleigh route, to check navigational aids, and complete a practice run. The practice run is expected to start after sundown tonight, Dec. 19, for the region including Delaware, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Southern New Jersey, greater Philadelphia and Southeast Pennsylvania.

Base address: 2600 Spruance Drive, New Castle, DE, 19720. Be aware of the newly completed road into our base, located about 100 yards from our previous entrance road, and closer to Basin Road. If you are driving from Basin Road onto Commons Boulevard, you will have to make your first U-Turn, and then take your first right about 100 yards later into our new base entrance.

News media are welcome on base as early as 10:15 a.m. on Dec. 20, 2007.

At 10:45 a.m., media may go aboard a C-130 transport aircraft to talk with Santa.

At 11:00 a.m. sharp, Maj. Gen. Frank Vavala, the Adjutant General of the Delaware National Guard, and other senior leaders will be on hand to greet St. Nick, or Santa, on the flight line after Santa departs from the C-130 driving a special vehicle chosen as his personal transportation.

At about 11:10 a.m. Santa will visit the main aircraft hanger to talk shop with our maintenance personnel about fixing C-130 transport aircraft and how that compares to the work his elves do on Santa's sleigh.

At about 11:20 a.m., Santa will present a special gift to the recruiting staff in their new recruiting office. The gift is so large Santa has asked the Aerial Port shop to get a large parachute ready to cover it. The gift is a surprise to our recruiting staff for having their best recruiting record in over a decade.

At about 11:30 a.m., St. Nick will stop into a modest holiday party being held for about 10 children and 10 parents, all families of some of our 30 deployed Security Force Airmen who have been overseas since October on a six-month mission to Southwest Asia. Santa will hand out presents to children, be invited to light a Christmas tree and sing a couple holiday songs, and talk about his visit.

Note: More is planned for the morning involving families and their deployed Airmen. This will be disclosed to news media later, as elves tell us this is a surprise to the families and children at the holiday party. It is a great way for media to learn directly about several of our deployments over the holidays.

Santa maintains a huge list of children who have been good throughout the year. The list even includes addresses, ZIP codes and postal codes. The list, of course, gets bigger each year by virtue of the world's increasing population. This year's population right now is 6,634,570,959! That includes at least several hundred thousand kids whose homes Santa will make a practice run over tonight.

Children can send e-mail to Santa in care of his elves, Chuckles and Buckley, from www.noradsanta.org. On Christmas Eve, December 24, beginning at 2:00 a.m. Mountain Standard Time (4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time) the website will feature a minute-by-minute update on Santa's travels around the world. All of this information is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.

This release is in the public domain, and any part may be used as written.

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