Nine bright new designs and two favorites from earlier years have been added to this year's selection of AOPA Air Safety Foundation aviation-themed holiday greeting cards. The cards feature original artwork from nine well-known aviation artists and allow general aviation pilots to share their love of flying while supporting ASF safety programs.
"With all the traveling that goes on over the holidays, what could be more important than supporting flying safety?" asked ASF Executive Director Bruce Landsberg. "Each box of these holiday greeting cards helps ASF continue improving GA's safety record."
Landsberg also pointed out that this year's 16 different card designs should make it easy to properly express best wishes for the holiday season. Designs range from humorous cartoons of Santa's aeronautical activities to strikingly evocative high-and-low key scenes of classic and contemporary aircraft in seasonal settings.
Featured this year are five "special edition" cards, with the original aviation artwork highlighted by embossed gold foil borders. Two of the special-edition cards are humorous, with images of Santa and one reindeer making deliveries in a stylized biplane, while the other three show finely crafted holiday depictions of a de Havilland DH-4 flying just above a moonlit snowscape, a Piper Super Cub on floats, and a Cessna 172 on final approach to a grass airstrip in an idyllic hidden valley.
The cards were created by noted aviation artists including Bernard Atkins, Ross Buckland, Brian Day, Gary DeFazio, Susan Detwiler, Nixon Galloway, Larry Jones, Bel Nieves, and Priscilla Messner Patterson.
Royalties from the cards go to support ASF's nationally recognized free safety seminars, which are open to all pilots. Last year, free ASF safety seminars reached some 33,000 pilots, with the innovative ASF "Seminar-in-a-Box" programs serving another 6,000, largely in more rural areas where the live seminars are not available.
Some of this year's other holiday card designs include:
- Peace On Earth, depicting a Waco 10 biplane on approach to a snowy rural airport as the evening light spills over the horizon.
- Christmas Eve, featuring a Curtiss Jenny flying low over a moonlit winter landscape.
- Perfect Christmas, showing a gaily decorated yellow Piper J-3 Cub parked just outside a warm, inviting rural home, and
- Early Arrival, with an Aviat Husky seaplane gliding through a lake just after landing.
Three colorful "Santa Arrival" theme cartoon cards include embossing as part of the design, while another presents a humorous view of elves working on Santa's airplane.
The popular cards, packed 25 to a box, are now available at prices ranging from $22 to $28. All are printed on high-quality recycled paper with vegetable-based inks. Inside greetings appear in red ink, with a free name imprint for orders of any three or more boxes of holiday cards.
In addition, ASF includes two free gifts with every order: a sheet of decorative holiday seals to give cards a festive holiday touch and a set of return address labels to save pilots time.
The AOPA Air Safety Foundation is the nonprofit educational organization solely dedicated to improving safety for general aviation pilots. It is supported primarily by contributions from individual pilots, foundations, and companies who share ASF's dedication to safer flying.
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