Sitting on the front porch with my battered feet bared to a healing breeze, I celebrated the end of my 34th EAA AirVenture Oshkosh marathon. Delivering my second round of rehydration elixir, my wife joined me. Having made the trek herself, she knows that the seemingly countless waypoints of things to see and learn are overwhelming, and that each year is defined by those things that survive in memory on the day after it’s over.
First thing Monday morning I eagerly found a seat close to the stage at the FAA Safety Center for an update on the Next Generation Air Transportation system. In its place was a member of the FAA Safety Team from the Great Lakes Region talking about ATC communications. The FAA exhibit area was almost a ghost town. In most of the booths usually staffed by FAAers in that division was an empty chair and a laminated explanation:
Congressional authorization for several FAA programs expired at 12:01 a.m. on July 23. As a result, nearly 4,000 FAA employers are now furloughed without pay. Given these circumstances, we are restricting our participation at AirVenture this year.
The Administration is working with Congress to resolve this unfortunate situation, and we regret the hardship this situation may cause for our employees and our stakeholders, including the attendees at AirVenture.
We wish you a successful event and hope to see you next year under getter circumstances.
Hoping that this was not an omen of what I would find elsewhere on my AirVenture hike, I trudged north. Each successive waypoint restored my hope and interest in aviation’s future, and these are the standouts.
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