They camped out in the dark and the drizzle.
These dedicated and generous people started
lining up nearly 12 hours earlier just to
get a free round-trip airline ticket to one of
the eight destinations that Vanguard Airlines flies.
The low-cost air carrier is trading free
tickets for food.
We're on our adventure with our green beans to
get our airline tickets.
This is just the latest stop on this mega
promotional campaign.
So far we've been to Pittsburgh, Atlanta,
Kansas City, and Dallas today.
And thus far we have collected over 100,£000 of food.
So it's been a huge success.
We have corn and green beans and more corn.
Howard Peak was the first in line.
Got free airline tickets to New York.
Vanguard handed out the vouchers for a thousand
of the airline tickets that have to be used
by May 15th and will be redeemed on a
first-come, first-served basis. Something worth camping
out for, for more than 1,000 people who spent
the night armed with blankets, sleeping bags,
tents, and of course, their cans of food.
72 cans of green beans.
I'm going to get rid of this, and then
hopefully we're going to go to New York. So it should
be fun.
Oh, it was a long night, chilly, wet, cold,
Drizzly, nasty. But yeah, it was worth it.
No doubt it was a miserable night, and for a
lot of these people, they say the experience
was worth it.
For some others, though, they aren't so sure.
I feel stupid now.
I've been out here too long, it's so cold.
Lindsay Appleton spent seven hours in line for
her ticket.
Linda Turner and her husband spent only two.
But you didn't want to camp out?
No, not really.
We're not fools.
We're 50.
Oh, well, I almost didn't make it.
The North Texas Food Bank expects to collect as
much as 30,£000 of food during this event.
This is a tremendous shot in the arm for a time
when normally donations are down after
the holidays and those of us that are in this
job think people have forgotten us and what
today says is people haven't forgotten us.
Now most of the food givers were thinking more
about their free trip than doing a good
deed, but food bank workers are hoping they'll
remember those in need at some future date.
Vanguard Airlines is hoping these new customers
will remember Vanguard for their future travels.
Linda Frederick, Texas News 5.