Mary Scharf, president of the Malone Chamber of Commerce, said this year’s festival, which took place on both Saturday and Sunday, attracted a total of about 2,000 people.

Scharf said there were two warm, sunny days for the fly-in, which helped draw many people to the city’s airport.

“The weather was beautiful. There were a lot of weddings and a lot of events on Saturday and we were very happy with the turnout. We did really well,” she said.

Scharf said the chamber was unable to set up a tent due to rainy weather over the past few weeks because water had been standing there.

“That made it difficult, but people still came and we set up tables and chairs under the gazebo and people loved the plane and helicopter rides,” she said.

Scharf said there were about 31 vendors at this year’s festival.

According to Scharf, the goal when the fly-in was introduced several years ago was to showcase the airport as an asset to the city of Malone.

“It’s a win for our community and I thought maybe if we highlighted it, people would realize what a win it is,” she said. “We just thought and when I talked to the chamber about it, there was a consensus that it’s a win in Malone that should be publicized and made known. That’s how we started. Just generally supporting the community, another piece of the community.”

Bruce Burditt, the city’s airport manager, said that in addition to the pilots who visited the airport over the weekend, pilots at the airport opened their hangars and talked to visitors about flying during the festival.

“We’re opening up the hangars, our people on the ground have opened up their hangars, and you can go down, see their planes, talk to the pilots. It’s really pretty cool,” he said. “We’re opening up our site, the tarmac, it’s a TSA security area, but we’re opening it up to the public so they can walk around, see the planes, go under the wings of an amphibious aircraft.”

Burditt said the fly-in was intended as an opportunity to showcase Malone’s airport.

“This is a very valuable piece of infrastructure for the city of Malone,” he said. “We have a lot of charter flights coming in here, more than people can imagine. We have a lot of charter flights and we just wanted to showcase the airport with the Chamber of Commerce and show what we have and what’s happening here.”

According to Burditt, in recent years the airport has expanded the runway, installed a fuel farm and remodeled the building that houses the electrical system for airport lighting.

“We’ve only been able to do all of this with grants from the FAA, New York State and the Department of Transportation,” he said. “The runway we’re on was only about two planes wide. Now there are seven parking spaces plus all that space and it’s adjacent to the snow removal equipment building. We’ve done a lot of major repairs here.”

In addition to airplanes and helicopters, state police officers and forest rangers were also on site at the weekend festival and showed off their equipment, including a state police drone.

At last Wednesday’s meeting before the fly-in, the Malone City Council thanked Burditt and the Chamber of Commerce for the growth of the festival over the past few years.

“It’s really nice that this is happening. People are excited about it and have been talking about it since before any information was even available. They were asking when the fly-in was happening and were looking forward to helicopter rides,” said City Councilor Jody Johnston.

City Councilor Paul Walbridge said the fly-in was an opportunity to bring people into the city.

“This is a way for us to showcase Malone. We can show what we have,” Walbridge said. “It’s just a great opportunity for us to show what Malone is all about.”