Attendance at “Oshkosh” (technically, EAA AirVenture) seemed lighter than in 2021 and 2022, possibly due to the weather being about 10 degrees F hotter and the first couple of days being marred by poor air quality courtesy of our Canadian neighbors. (EAA says that attendance was actually a record, contradicting our lived experience.) The EAA Lifetime Member “Oasis” was nothing of the sort, due to A/C that couldn’t cool the place down below 80 degrees. The typical GA plane, warbird, or vintage/antique lacks A/C and, therefore, people had trouble getting motivated to do intra-event flying.
Given that people have less tolerance for discomfort every year (central and mini-split A/C having grown in popularity) and that we’re assured by the New York Times and CNN that Planet Earth is going Full Venus, I wonder if it wouldn’t make sense to move the fly-in to early June. The public schools in Oshkosh get out on May 31, 2024, thus freeing up the no-A/C school buses that are essential to the EAA event. Why not fire up EAA AirVenture on June 10, 2024? Here are the weather averages by month:
June is 5 degrees cooler than July (though records for June 10 include some 90-degree days in various years; record temp for June 10 is 94). Given the higher heat in July, one might imagine that it is also the peak time for thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes. Here’s a warning that we got:
OSHALERT 7/27: NWS issued Severe Thunderstorm WATCH for KOSH until 11pm. Could bring 1-2″ hail, 70mph winds, heavy rain, isolated tornado.
When basic new airplanes cost about the same as Corvettes and thousands were produced annually, perhaps a mass casualty hail event at KOSH wouldn’t have been so bad. But now that new piston four-seaters can be over $1 million and parts can take months to obtain, the risk of losing 10,000 planes has to be given more weight. From my web searches, it looks like June is actually a higher risk month for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms than July.
If the event can’t be moved, perhaps it can be made more comfortable. EAA has over $44 million/year in revenue (see Form 990; note that this was down to just $18 million in 2020, AirVenture having been canceled due to lockdowns). How about spending some of that $44 million on A/C for the four vendor hangars and also on some air-conditioned lunch venues scattered around the grounds? While EAA is at it, build some additional permanent running-water bathrooms around the show grounds and bathhouses (not Florida-style, necessarily) in campgrounds. Porta-potties and trailers don’t make for a luxurious experience. EAA is constantly harping on how they want to get more people who identify as “women” to show up. How many women want to use an outhouse for 7 days? And women with kids? Imagine the mom below trying to manage and clean up her 3 young kids in porta-potties:
