AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2020 - 46

PILOT BRIEFING
PERSPECTIVE |

The year that fly-ins forgot
Challenges when your job is putting on events and a pandemic strikes
BY CHRIS EADS

46 | AOPA PILOT September 2020

a pithy phrase "15 days to slow the spread.") Obviously, we were
all naively optimistic.
It was grueling to be a part of the earliest decisions for events
such as Sun 'n Fun, wondering if it could be held a few weeks later
as organizers had originally hoped. We knew that our San Marcos
fly-in was likely to be canceled too, but held out hope that the lateMay event would be past the worst of it. But as time dragged on,
and the graphs on the news showed this thing was not going away
anytime soon, one by one our events began to fall.
The decision making the AOPA events team faced during those
early days reminds me a bit of the phrase "the fog of war," where
mass confusion and insufficient data makes decisions on the battlefield difficult. History looks back on those decisions with perfect
clarity, but in the moment, no one can see forward easily.
We took our fair share of criticism for being on the earlier edge
of event cancellations, often pulling the plug while other neighboring events were still declaring optimism and while states still
had short-term limits to their stay-at-home orders. But the details
behind the scenes were compelling. We recognized the potential
for our large-scale gatherings to be what experts are now calling
"super-spreader events." As more data became available regarding the social distancing, mask-wearing, physical protections, and
crowd-size limitations that would be necessary to prevent spreading the virus, it became impossible for us to visualize effectively
and safely producing our fly-ins, which typically draw in thousands of people from hundreds of miles, and to do so with the style,

CHRIS ROSE

WHEN THE YEAR BEGAN, no one could have anticipated how terribly disorienting 2020 would be to just about every industry and
every home in America. That is as true for aviation events as for
any other business sector in the nation.
When we first heard rumors about a virus that would sweep
the globe, the AOPA Outreach and Events team had just completed
its annual kickoff meetings with airport and community leaders
at all three of our 2020 regional fly-in destinations. Hundreds of
local stakeholders who would help us build these complex events
gathered for strategy sessions to discuss everything from airfield
operations to food service and to where we should place the portable restrooms. Those annual meetings are some of our favorite
gatherings as the enthusiasm of local leaders to host our events is
simply contagious.
We had bold plans to try some new ideas, adding a car show,
airshow, and concert series in cooperation with the Go Wheels Up!
Texas group in San Marcos. We were queued up for a taste of the
Wild West in lovely Casper, Wyoming. The beautiful fall season
near the Finger Lakes around Rochester, New York, promised a fun
event in a classic northeastern city. It was going to be a great year.
And then the pandemic happened. The guidance in early March
suggested a few weeks of altered living would effectively slow the
spread, and all hoped that this would be behind us as the summer
flying weather arrived. If you remember, everyone at the time was
saying things would be back to normal shortly-from the politicians, to the medical experts, to the media pundits. (I seem to recall

AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2020

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