It certainly didn't feel as busy as past year.
What?!? I've been going for the last 15 years straight, and this year was noticeably larger than any previous year. The South 40 has grown, Scholler had a whole new section and was much fuller out at the extreme edges. Lines were longer, airshow crowds were more crowded, Fond du Lac looked to have grown to the size of Sun 'n' Fun... There was more room available at the show than ever before, yet all places were more crowded as well.
Do they count average aircraft movements only during the time the field is open? Seems like that number could go up significantly if you take out the hours the field is closed to arrivals and departures.
Yeah, I've tried to calculate that several different ways and it never comes out with their number. The time period they talked about (July 19-29) has the field open for 117 total hours, which would be an average of 144/hour. And the 29th (Monday after the show) has very few operations.
The busiest day of the show is around 400 operations per hour... The other busiest airports in the world average about 100 per hour on their busiest days. That seems like a much more impressive stat. I'd also like to know how many they clear out on Sunday after the airshow is done!
Does that include multiple landings and takeoffs of one plane, like the Bell Helicopter, Ford Trimotor, and daily air shows?
The Mooney accounted for six operations.
There is enough interest I think that the show could double in length and they would have good attendance (but there was a volunteer shortage this year, so that means hiring people and a higher admittance price)
Not to mention, they'd probably lose a fair number of vendors. The booths are already expensive, and would need to cost more to support a show that's twice as long... But it's expensive to pay your employees for that length of time too, and it's very difficult on them to work the show as it is. It's incredibly tiring.
I sure wish it lasted longer. You'd need 6-8 weeks to see it all, unfortunately... And the best part is seeing friends, and making it longer would probably mean that more people would only be there part of the time, making it less likely you'd see your buds.
One thing that I noticed - Epic aircraft had a huge presence in the middle of the field and had zero lookers. Beautiful airplanes, but no interest?
Well, they've been around for quite a while now, and they always seem to be on the verge of certification... But nothing has changed. The Epic LT has been out since 2004 and became available for purchase as a kit in 2006. They were already in certification testing at that point, yet they've still not certified a single airplane, 13 years later. It's kind of hard to get excited about at this point, since it seems Cessna's Denali is likely to be certified first and suck up a lot of the market.
John and Martha King were hilarious. They are two of the most professional speakers in any field that I have ever seen. I was kind of surprised at their "live act" how good it was.
And they're some of the nicest people you'll ever meet, too.