Have attended all 52 events in Oshkosh. Attendance must have picked up over the weekend with the free youth admission because I did not see the normally large crowds. Wait times while standing in lines for that $15.00 hamburger was not long. The absence of a Ford presence was missed. Boeing Plaza was sparse and appeared to be void of anything other than produced by Boeing. The effects of inflation were being felt by everyone I talked with. This year’s event seemed to be missing something, but I cannot put my arms around it.
I didn’t attend this year. Covid 19 hasn’t exactly disappeared, and if the crowds were as claimed we can expect a surge in cases in the next couple of weeks. Those will be difficult to attribute to AirVenture directly of course because so many people come from afar for the event.
EAA said the same thing after SnF 2021 and 2022, yet it seemed that crowds were smaller than before. That’s the fly-in perspective; it’s possible overland attendance boosted overall numbers.
The increasingly corporate nature of the organization makes such announcements suspect to this guy.
It sure seemed crowded to me this year. I would have guessed it set an attendance record.
But as someone above said, it did seem like there was something missing. And I can’t put my arms around it either.
Hopefully next year, the buzz will be how to implement the approved 100UL and what the final MOSAIC rule will look like.
Hope to see a video clip of the event as seen in previous yrs.
A Journalist would call some of the vendors (beer, brats, soft swirl, etc.) to hear what they say about revenues for the week.
Yes. Once a week, for two days (odd and even days) I waited in line for an hour in both our cars for gasoline, because, as you know, 50 years ago, the whole world was just about out of oil and there was a “shortage.” (If the sarcasm doesn’t come through: Now that I’m 50 years older, I see that these crisis are all “man made.”)
How and who do they count? You may recall the SnF controversy of yore, where volunteers, vendors and individuals were more or less counted as a distinct individual each time they entered the gates. They were multiplying a single person by each day they attended.
How are the people counted? If a person buys a week long pass are they counted as 5 people? What about volunteers and exhibitors?