A hundred Girl Guides have taken part in a Saturday Night Sleepover at Southampton Airport, to mark the centenary year for both the airport and the Girl Guiding Association. The event, nicknamed ‘A Night Flight to Nowhere’ by the girls themselves, saw 100 guides and their leaders check-in at the airport for a whole night of aviation activities.

During the night the girls took part in demonstrations with ‘Arthur’ the Customs Dog, before dividing into teams to complete over 13 challenges across the airport. These included; developing their customer service skills, practicing paper planes skills, becoming an airport fire fighter, learning aircraft marshalling techniques, and the sampling food from some of the airport’s 48 destinations across Europe.  Each Guide also had the opportunity to take part in a special ‘Bing-Bong-A-Thon’ and make their very own airport passenger announcement.

Around midnight, the guides settled into their sleeping bags in the airport’s international Arrival’s Hall to sing camp songs and watch the film, ‘The Terminal’ about a man who lived in an airport.

The idea for the whole event came from the Four Marks Guides in Alton. Leader Jackie Roberts said: “When asked for ideas about where to hold a Centenary sleepover, the girls themselves came up with Southampton Airport as a venue. When we made the request we had no idea how much fun we were letting everyone in for. The idea 'took off' and resulted in 100 Guides from the whole area taking part in this incredibly fun series of imaginative, airport-themed challenges. A brilliant way to have fun, celebrate our centenary, and learn a lot about how an airport works at the same time!

Hazel Screech, Terminal Operations Manager at Southampton Airport, and also a former Girl Guide, added: “When we received the letter from Jackie, we thought we should celebrate our joint centenary years in style, so we invited 100 Girl Guides from across the region to come and join the sleepover in the airport terminal. I can safely say, this is the first time ever that 100 Girl Guides have set up camp in the airport for the night.”

Lucy Lawrenson, from Paradox Senior Guides Section in Southampton, commented: “I think it’s been a great event to celebrate the joint centenary of the airport and Girl Guides.  It’s great to see so many girls from across the region joining together to celebrate as one big family.”

Rhiannon Hancocks, added: “Learning how to marshall an aircraft was insightful, as I never knew about that role. I loved tasting the food from around the world. The Belgian chocolate was delicious.  It was nice that it was all girls together, as we didn’t have to worry about dripping chocolate down our chins.”

Editors notes/Girl Guide Facts:

• With over half a million members, Girlguiding UK is the largest youth organisation in the UK.
• Half the women in the UK have been involved in Guiding at some point in their lives.
• The Guide Association was founded in 1910, by 1912 an Air Mechanic badge had been introduced.