There aren’t a lot of ways to take a commercial flight with an eagle, so Wade Stevens bought another seat on the plane and brought Auburn’s bald eagle Independence on with him as a carry-on.

Stevens and his group from Auburn’s Raptor Center took Independence, better known as Indy, on the flight to Philadelphia in an aluminum crate with a perch inside tall enough for her to stretch out her tail feathers. They followed the overhead seatbelt sign and buckled Indy in for the trip, pulling the seatbelt tight over her waist — well, crate, actually — as the flight attendants in the aisle demonstrated to the human passengers.

“We even went so far, I probably shouldn’t admit this, as to put our logo on a bunch of little ear plug packages so that if she got to talking we could hand those out,” Stevens said.

Turns out, Indy did well on her flight with Stevens along with Auburn Raptor Center eagle trainers Amanda Sweeney and Andrew Hopkins as well as Dr. Amberly Sokoloff. She was quiet and chilled out before her big moment later that Sept. 14 evening at the Philadelphia Eagles game against the Minnesota Vikings.

The whole thing happened secretly. It was a surprise to the whole Auburn fanbase when a video of Indy’s eventual flight garnered a social media storm that night.

But this wasn’t a PR stunt from Stevens, the director at the Raptor Center. It was a long-awaited execution of a plan to expand Auburn’s beloved eagle flight tradition nationally — and largely, a route to drive a new source of revenue.

A new era for Auburn’s famous eagles

Stevens has only been the director of the Raptor Center for about year now. He came to Auburn, he said, because of the opportunities he saw to grow the program’s conservation efforts and be a key part of what makes Auburn football uniquely Auburn.

The Raptor Center, though, is on a quite small budget. It’s a common misconception, Stevens said, that the Raptor Center receives money from Auburn’s athletics program because of its involvement with the pregame eagle flight tradition that began with Tiger, War Eagle VI, soaring across Jordan-Hare Stadium in 2000.

Instead, it receives a small operating allowance from the Auburn College of Veterinary Medicine. The only other way the Raptor Center makes any money is through selling $10 tickets to its Football Fans and Feathers event showcasing the birds on Friday nights before home football games as well as educational events across Alabama.

“They’re always going somewhere, this one is just a lot further north than they’re used to,” Hopkins said of the birds.

Certainly, the Raptor Center’s most famous job is the eagle flight. But the humans there work at Auburn because of their focus on conservation. Amanda Sweeney, Indy’s trainer, was not a sports fan before she began working with Auburn’s eagle flights. She learned how football works from her trips to Jordan-Hare with the birds.

To continue to further Stevens’ goals of education, conservation and awareness, he needed to find ways to make more money. There were already plans in the work to build a new Raptor Center facility before Stevens came to Auburn, but more funding was needed to make that happen.

So Stevens looked outside of Auburn.

“There was some discussion early on when I was essentially asking for ideas on how we could increase or expand our horizons about doing eagle flights or presentations, if you will, for larger entities,” Stevens said. “To do it for a national audience.”

This actually isn’t the first time Auburn brought its eagles off campus for a pregame flight. Tiger flew at Rice-Ecceles Stadium in Salt Lake City during the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics. But Stevens said that was a one-off event. He also mentioned Challenger, a now-retired bald eagle with the American Eagle Foundation, has traveled the country flying at football stadiums and race tracks before events — including at the 2011 BCS National Championship game in Phoenix between Auburn and Oregon.

The Raptor Center had already tried something new under Stevens’ leadership as Indy flew at Plainsman Park before an Auburn baseball game this spring. But as the Raptor Center began to place calls across the country seeing if any organizations had an interest in the eagle flight, it certainly wasn’t viewed as any one-off event.

Eventually, the Philadelphia Eagles reached out about Auburn’s eagles.

“The bald eagle is one of our country’s greatest symbols of freedom, strength and pride,” Brian Papson, vice president of marketing for the Philadelphia Eagles, said in a statement provided to AL.com. “While it represents so much and is viewed with profound reverence and admiration, the bald eagle also serves as the foundational element on which the identity of our franchise was built, 90 years ago.”

An eagle’s visit to the Eagles

Preparing Indy to fly in a new stadium? That’s the easy part. She’s used to crowds, used to descending down to the football field.

Bringing Indy to a new city on an airplane? Well now, that’s the hard part.

It’s why when he signed a contract with the Eagles to bring Indy to fly, Stevens couldn’t be excited too quickly. There were logistical issues to sort of acquiring permits to travel with a large bird and figuring out the best way to bring Indy on the plane.

It didn’t make a lot of sense to put Indy in her crate underneath the plane with luggage. Stevens said that could cause stress ahead of her big flight.

So they picked buying Indy a seat on the flight to Philadelphia.

“People travel with pets,” Stevens said. “I’m not calling her a pet, but people travel with animals quite regularly. It’s not crazy different. It is a little bit interesting when you’re at a TSA checkpoint in an airport and you have to pull your eagle out there at the security checkpoint so they can check the carrier.”

Stevens pre-scheduled a time to go through security, and as he arrived and Sweeney took Indy out of the case, Stevens described it as if a million phones — from travelers and TSA agents alike — to get a picture of the oddity. An eagle at the airport? Not exactly a normal day.

After a successful plane flight, Indy arrived at Lincoln Financial Stadium for her practice flight. She soared across the stadium smoothly with no crowd, before she’d do it again a few hours later in front of more than 70,000 people.

“We already knew she’d be well adapted to this kind of environment,” Sweeney said. “She’s really used to the routine, used to a game atmosphere and that’s kind of unique in eagles.”

Come Thursday night, near the end of the Star-Spangled Banner, it was Stevens opening the door of Indy’s crate, releasing her to soar down to Sweeney who waited on the field.

The pregame flight was a proud moment for Stevens, he said. It was the first execution of a long-term project. It won’t be the last.

Expansion isn’t stopping here. What does that mean for Auburn’s tradition?

Indy is going to be Auburn’s touring bird, so to speak.

Stevens didn’t say exactly when, but there are plans in the works for more trips back to fly the eagle in Philadelphia. And these outside-of-Auburn flights aren’t limited to just the Eagles either. Stevens said the Raptor Center has been in communication with other franchises in the NFL as well as other sports and venues for pregame eagle flights.

There have been very early discussions about indoor arenas — including Neville Arena. The challenge of a pregame eagle flight indoors is the closer confines and exactly what flight path would be plausible.

Stevens, too, has begun work expanding the program to train other birds like falcons and hawks for potential flights for teams with bird mascots.

Outside of Auburn venues could include racetracks, state fairs or even political rallies. With the World Cup coming to the United States in 2026 and the Olympic Games coming to Los Angeles in summer 2028, Stevens has his sights set on major events in the future where a patriotic symbol like a bald eagle would be fitting.

“There’s a lot of different things when you’re talking about a patriotic flight associated with an anthem or a military appreciation type scenario, a bald eagle is something that kind of fits in with that so it really kind of opens the door to a lot of different venues,” Stevens said.

The idea would be Indy flies during the national anthem, just as she did at the Eagles game, when traveling to other venues.

And because Indy is a bald eagle, she is the best candidate from Auburn’s Raptor Center to take on the road for spectacles like this. Indy came to the Raptor Center when she was two years old and has been with the program for the last five years. She has flown at many Auburn football games — making her Auburn debut in 2021 — and has flown once this season at the first game against UMass on Sept. 2.

But Indy is not Auburn’s official War Eagle. That’s Aurea, a golden eagle, who made her first pregame flight in 2018 and was named War Eagle VIII in 2019.

So while Stevens wants to continue to expand the eagle flights as an opportunity to make money for his program, he also understands there is a tradition he has to uphold. The main criticism Stevens received was from those who wanted the tradition to remain strictly Auburn’s.

That will remain the case with Aurea. Stevens said it’s important to him to fly the official War Eagle at every opportunity. And while multiple eagles are brought to Jordan-Hare Stadium on a game day in case the bird expected to fly that day does not appear ready, Stevens does expect Aurea will fly more frequently at Auburn games while Indy, described in a press release as Auburn’s more “dramatic” bird, will go on the road.

Indy’s new role in the program will help Stevens further the goals he took over as the director hoping to achieve.

“We have a master plan that’s been in place for a few years, we’re now ready to bring this to fruition at Auburn,” Stevens said. This will be a destination from an ecotourism standpoint.”

Those who made the trip to Philadelphia flew back Friday. They rushed back to Auburn and hardly even had time to go home before the Football Fans and Feathers event. Auburn played Samford the next day. It was homecoming weekend, and Stevens said he’d never had this much demand for the Friday evening show before, so he had to install bleachers at the Raptor Center’s outdoor amphitheater for the first time. They were quickly filled.

At the end of the show, after showing a cast of owls and falcons and vultures, it was Aurea who swooped over the crowd — the bird the crowd came for — in preparation for her flight the next day.

Indy — after a long day on the road — got the weekend to rest.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]