The rest of the party would have picked him up in Moorhead, saving him the journey in the bus and leaving him time to get some rest. They were going to Moorhead for a radio performance at the station KFGO with disk jockey Charlie Boone. It is rumored that after Bobby Vee and his band arrived at the station, Boone asked them what their band name was, and they looked around and responded with; The Shadows. Anderson called Hubert Jerry Dwyer (1930–2016), owner of the Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City, to charter the plane to fly to Fargo's Hector Airport, the closest one to Moorhead. Flight arrangements were made with Roger Peterson, a 21-year-old local pilot described as a "young married man who built his life around flying." The flying service charged a fee of $36 per passenger for the flight on the 1947 single-engined, V-tailed Beechcraft 35 Bonanza (registration ), which seated three passengers plus the pilot. A popular misconception, originating from Don McLean's eponymous song about the crash, was that the plane was called "American Pie"; no record exists of any name ever having been given to N3794N. The most widely accepted version of events was that Richardson had contracted flu during the tour and asked Jennings for his seat on the plane. When Holly learned that Jennings was not going to fly, he said in jest: "Well, I hope your ol' bus freezes up." Jennings responded: "Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes," a humorous but ill-fated response that haunted him for the rest of his life. Valens, who once had a fear of flying, asked Allsup for his seat on the plane. The two agreed to toss a coin to decide. Bob Hale, a disc jockey with Mason City's KRIB-AM, was emceeing the concert that night and flipped the coin in the ballroom's side-stage room shortly before the musicians departed for the airport. Valens won the coin toss for the seat on the flight. In contradiction to the testimony of Allsup and Jennings, Dion has since said that Holly approached him along with Valens and Richardson to join the flight, not Holly's bandmates. In a 2009 interview, Dion said that Holly called him, Valens, and Richardson into a vacant dressing room during Sardo's performance and said "I've chartered a plane, we're the guys making the money [we should be the ones flying ahead]...the only problem is there are only two available seats."