Airventure 2018 attendance numbers are in!!

FloridaPilot

FloridaPilot

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FloridaStudentPilot
Total Attendance 601,000

Total Aircraft 10,000+

Total Show Airplanes 2,979

Camping more than 40,000

Forums 1,500 visited by a total of 75,000 people.

GA is dead....nah, I don't think so ;)
 
Yeah right , save for experimentals , it is like some kind of Cuban style automotive show .... just about every darn plane on the field is at least 30 or 40 years old ...
 
When the economy is good, Oshkosh really shines. It is an awesome destination for pilots and non pilots alike, and a value at that. And what's wrong with lots of old airplanes?
 
Warmi said:
Yeah right , save for experimentals , it is like some kind of Cuban style automotive show .... just about every darn plane on the field is at least 30 or 40 years old ...
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Hmmm, let’s see. Besides EAB, what else does EAA focus on. There’s warbirds, of course.

And what’s the other one?

Oh yeah..... VINTAGE.

What are they not particularly focused on?

Oh yeah... new stuff out of Wichita and Vero Beach.
 
I'm surprised that a relatively small percentage of attendees visit the forums. They're the best part!
 
And remember how EAA counts attendance. 1 weekly wrist band counts as 7 people.
 
TFulwider said:
I'm surprised that a relatively small percentage of attendees visit the forums. They're the best part!
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I for one am not a fan of the forums. Maybe it's the ones I have been to but I find them pretty boring, and poorly presented. Of course I don't go to the big ones like Foreflight and Garmin so I am sure those are different. I just assume spend 5 minutes on google than 30 in a crowded tent.
 
I've been so some really good ones, like the guy who flew the SR71. The best one was Joe Kittinger, and hardly anyone showed up. The ones about eh scramjet were really cool too. The aviation safety ones that the FAA puts on are dreadful though.
 
Grum.Man said:
I for one am not a fan of the forums. Maybe it's the ones I have been to but I find them pretty boring, and poorly presented. Of course I don't go to the big ones like Foreflight and Garmin so I am sure those are different. I just assume spend 5 minutes on google than 30 in a crowded tent.
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For me there's just something about being in the room while Burt and Dick Rutan talk about the Voyager or canards in general, hearing Bud Anderson or Bob Hoover (RIP) retell old war stories and even catching 101st airborne veterans from E company sharing about their life. The FAA forums are snooze city, I'll give you that. I avoid them like the plague
 
TFulwider said:
For me there's just something about being in the room while Burt and Dick Rutan talk about the Voyager or canards in general, hearing Bud Anderson or Bob Hoover (RIP) retell old war stories and even catching 101st airborne veterans from E company sharing about their life. The FAA forums are snooze city, I'll give you that. I avoid them like the plague
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As I suspected we don't attend the same types. I don't really care about hearing those guys stories. I mean that in the nicest way possible but it's the same stories I've heard or read thousands of times. My hats off to them as legends and war hero, but not my cup of tea.
 
SkyDog58 said:
Hmmm, let’s see. Besides EAB, what else does EAA focus on. There’s warbirds, of course.

And what’s the other one?

Oh yeah..... VINTAGE.

What are they not particularly focused on?

Oh yeah... new stuff out of Wichita and Vero Beach.
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There is nothing special about Oshkosh - it looks like your local airport...just pretty much all of them in the same spot at the same time.
 
retpd2001 said:
And remember how EAA counts attendance. 1 weekly wrist band counts as 7 people.
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Bingo. I will also say, the degree to which non-aviation vendors can shift the demographics of an event also matters, when attempting to use attendance as a litmus test for the health of the national GA recreational landscape. Taken to the extreme, you could put a redbird simulator tent at the Texas State Fair and argue GA is doing better than ever based on attendance. That obviously would be intellectually dishonest. Not saying that's the current landscape at OSH, but with a purported 50% non-aviation vendor as of 2018, it makes you wonder what the distribution of people are that actually expend on 100LL and support for aircraft ownership and maintenance/upgrade , vice merely something cheap to do one muggy Wisconsin summer day out of the year. I'm interested in the former, not the latter. I'm also a bit skeptical to the degree the latter become the former due to OSH, which is the reason I stopped doing Young Eagles.
 
hindsight2020 said:
... it makes you wonder what the distribution of people are that actually expend on 100LL and support for aircraft ownership and maintenance/upgrade , vice merely something cheap to do one muggy Wisconsin summer day out of the year. I'm interested in the former, not the latter. ...
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Couldn't be in stronger disagreement. Its the folks burning car gas exclusively who are going to ***** about airplane noise. Its going to be them complaining about GA safety, and them closing airports. You cannot positively engage the nonflying public enough, period. Show them a bunch of responsible pilots safely flying airplanes and you will leave and impression.
 
Vintage cutoff is 48 years (as of this year) ago. Plenty of old stuff up in GA parking.

No matter how you count the attendance, it's stiil way down from the peak a bit over a decade ago.
 
Part of the reason why I wanted to attend OSH this year is because I wanted to know for sure the health of GA not just hearing hearsay. I was there for 1 week, (First time) and it was PACKED! many more people than I was used to at SnF. There are a LOT of new stuff out there too, Mooney, Pilatus, Cessna's new airplane, Light Sport, Plus quite a few autonomous aircraft which is in development.
 
Can 10k planes really make it in and out in that short of time?
I'm sure there are a good number of volunteer planes arriving days before but let's assume 85% of the planes are in and out while the show is on. That's a lot of traffic. With an air show every day limiting the hours.
Time to break down the planes per day and then per hour.
 
The airplane count ,doesn’t count the aircraft ,at surrounding airports.
 
Warmi said:
Yeah right , save for experimentals , it is like some kind of Cuban style automotive show .... just about every darn plane on the field is at least 30 or 40 years old ...
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That's the "new" stuff.

They got heaps of derelicts parked all over the grass much older than that.
IMG_0411.JPG
 
retpd2001 said:
And remember how EAA counts attendance. 1 weekly wrist band counts as 7 people.
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I wonder if this is actually true, as I always thought that the posted visitor numbers sounded ridiculously high. Assuming the 10,000 planes are correct, this would mean that for every plane they were getting 60 visitors! I know that a lot of people drive in, but still.

600,000 daily tickets would appear much more reasonable.
 
bugsiegel said:
Can 10k planes really make it in and out in that short of time?
I'm sure there are a good number of volunteer planes arriving days before but let's assume 85% of the planes are in and out while the show is on. That's a lot of traffic. With an air show every day limiting the hours.
Time to break down the planes per day and then per hour.
Click to expand...
And down from the peak which I think was up about 12,000. That's why there's a sign on tower pronouncing it as the world's busiest (that one week). What's rougher now isn't so much getting them on the ground but dealing with putting them some place. The EAA has a stated goal of not turning anybody away by 2020, but it's going to be tough. All the parking areas have DIMINISHED over the years. The taxiway work on the north end not only cut into the available space, but the poor design of the drainage accompanying it made a substantial part of the north 40 unusable. More "specialized" (read high roller) things have chewed up space in what was homebuilt parking in show center. HBP/HBC was expanded a bit a while back, but the net was still a loss I think. Vintage and HBP lost space back 15 years ago or so after a DC-3 ended up in the paved ditch because the pilot forgot to lock the tailwheel. We used to park right out to Papa but now we're back a plane width.
The idiotic security perimeter road took more space out of Vintage and Ultraights. Some aditional "farm land" down south was reclaimed, but it's not very much and still a lot of it is unusable due to poor drainage and untaxiable surfaces.
 
flyingron said:
Vintage cutoff is 48 years (as of this year) ago. Plenty of old stuff up in GA parking.

No matter how you count the attendance, it's stiil way down from the peak a bit over a decade ago.
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I'm curious to know what the attendance numbers were 10-15 years ago.
 
As I stated, they peaked out about 12,000 planes.
 
retpd2001 said:
And remember how EAA counts attendance. 1 weekly wrist band counts as 7 people.
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Yeah, that is a bit misleading. One volunteer working the entire run can be 11 of those “attendees”. I am in the festival biz and know that number included EVERYONE that enters the gates, not just paid attendees.

I would be more curious how many unique visitors they had.
 
One volunteer working the entire run can be 11 of those “attendees”
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Doubtful. The volunteers that work sufficient hours (40) get a weekly wristband. We don't send anything up the chain about our volunteers other than the total hours they worked for us. But a volunteer is an attendee even if he doesn't pay cash for his admission.
 
Shawn said:
Yeah, that is a bit misleading. One volunteer working the entire run can be 11 of those “attendees”. I am in the festival biz and know that number included EVERYONE that enters the gates, not just paid attendees.
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If that volunteer counted for 11 days this year, as long as they counted it the same 20 years ago, it really doesn't matter. The EAA is just using a metric (and there are hundreds) to quantify the growth or contraction of the event.
 
kyleb said:
If that volunteer counted for 11 days this year, as long as they counted it the same 20 years ago, it really doesn't matter. The EAA is just using a metric (and there are hundreds) to quantify the growth or contraction of the event.
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It does matter a bit...for example 300,000 visitors over 7 days is much different than 600,000 atendees but same volume of actual people. It is all just spin. (Using 300k as an example)
 
Suffice it to say that Oshkosh is a bright, shining spot in general aviation. Pretty much every GA pilot plans to attend OSH at least once or twice, and many (like me) save their nickels all year long so as to be able to attend annually.

That said, OSH is not a good indication of GA health, any more than Daytona is a measure of NASCAR's health. By virtually every measure, GA is way down, and in many parts of the country it is already virtually dead.
 
bugsiegel said:
Can 10k planes really make it in and out in that short of time?
I'm sure there are a good number of volunteer planes arriving days before but let's assume 85% of the planes are in and out while the show is on. That's a lot of traffic. With an air show every day limiting the hours.
Time to break down the planes per day and then per hour.
Click to expand...

Yes... And I would bet that less than 15% are arriving days before. And pretty much everyone who remains departs on Sunday - I've left by car (I only live an hour drive away) and gone back to get the plane on Monday and been the last plane on the field. Twice (at least, maybe 3x).

Now, generally the arrivals are spaced out over the Fri-Sun before the show starts, and the giant cluster that happened this year was due to terrible weather on Friday and Saturday. There are also people arriving and departing every day of the week - Some people are there the whole week, another large group will arrive before the start of the show but leave as early as Monday (some on Tues and Wed as well), and a third large group will fly in Thursday/Friday and stay until Sunday. I would estimate that there are 9K planes that come in on the prior weekend (busiest for arrivals), and 6K that leave on Sunday (busiest for departures).

Keep in mind, runway separation for the show is reduced to just 1500 feet, so the controllers can land multiple planes on the runway at the same time. The colored dots that are painted on the runway are 1500 feet apart so they have a good visual reference for minimum separation. For departures, they use both halves of the runway, using the centerline to effectively split the runway into a left runway and a right runway, and they'll line up planes as soon as the previous one starts rolling and clear them for takeoff as soon as the previous one has gotten 1500 feet away.

Either way, if you have 1000 arrivals on Friday, 4000 on Saturday, 4000 on Sunday that's an average of 308 arrivals per hour on Saturday/Sunday. If you have 6K departures on the ending Sunday, that's more like 600/hour (there's still an airshow on Sunday, though it is shortened). But, using two runways and two halves of each, that's one departure every 24 seconds, which is about right from what I've seen. It's a madhouse, but it's really fun to do and should be on every pilot's bucket list.

(I've done it about 3 dozen times now...)
 
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