Are you willing to consider the possibility that they didn't extend hours because, way before the event, when they set the normal closing time of 8pm, it was chosen because they felt that remaining open past that would create a safety hazard?
I think you will find that many of us grizzled old OSH vets are baffled by the arbitrary 8 PM field closing. (In the "olden days" arriving after dark wasn't just accepted -- it was common.)
It is light until 9 PM at that time of year in OSH. The arbitrary nature of the field closing time appears to have little to do with "safety", and more to do with bureaucratic convenience.
Which isn't to say I disagree with it, under normal operating circumstances. It's good for the volunteers, tower personnel, and CAP guys to have time to party, too. :wink2: But the night in question was FAR from "normal", in any sense of the word, and keeping the place open an extra 15 - 30 minutes to accommodate all those poor guys in the air would have been the right thing to do.
Is it the danger of the hold itself that you are objecting to? Would it be safer to just divert traffic to other airports to wait out the closure on the ground if the airport was expected to be closed longer than a certain time?
The situation was as follows:
1. Field closed to camping and GA arrivals for several days due to on-field flooding, creating pent-up demand.
2. Field is finally open to arrivals after the airshow.
3. Everyone launches, timing their arrival to coincide with the end of the airshow. This could be anything from dozens to hundreds of aircraft in the air, streaming up into the FISK approach.
4. Roush prangs his biz jet into the concrete, sliding off the runway.
5. Airport is closed, and remains closed until the next day.
I wasn't in the air this year, but I was the last time this happened, and it got crazy. The holds around Rush and Green lake filled up rapidly, until we were going around the lake LINE ABREAST at times. Everyone was hoping that the airport would re-open "soon", so few were willing to leave the hold and lose their place in line.
I'm sure the situation this year was similar, perhaps even worse, due to the pent-up demand caused by the field closure.
In the end, everything worked out fine, with the only casualty being the inconvenience of hundreds of airmen and their families. But that doesn't change the fact that the folks on the ground made a decision to close the field for the night that could have resulted in far worse problems "upstream" of the airport.
My point in bringing this up is so that in the future these decisions are not made independently of one another. You shouldn't enhance safety on the ground by increasing danger in the air. That's a bad policy.
Suggested solutions appear to be as follows:
1. Admit that there is no "danger" in reopening Rwy 27 after a crash that occurred over a mile away. Re-open the airport within 15 minutes after any accident that is determined to be a non-event, operationally.
This seems sadly unlikely, in today's litigious world. No level of risk is acceptable.
2. Add emergency equipment to the field so that they can handle two simultaneous incidents. This seems more likely to occur than #1, but apparently the idea of using volunteer emergency responders is not viable. See the "litigious world" part, again.
Therefore, it is probably unaffordable.
3. Keep things the way they are.
Because #3 is the easiest solution, nothing much will change. But let's not pretend that this is a less-risky option. It's just easier for the bureaucracy to handle.