Did EAA Do The Right Thing In Cancelling AirVenture Over COVID-19?

In what turned into a viral survey, Plane & Pilot eNews readers were asked how they felt about EAA's decision to call off the 2020 edition of the world's biggest airshow, and thousands of readers answered. While the survey is a non-scientific poll, the results were a powerful indicator that there's strong consensus about the organization's handling of the issue.

At the same time, numerous readers took Plane & Pilot to task for a question that many felt was either confusing or assumed a premise that many disagreed with.

More on the controversy in a moment, but as to the question of whether EAA handled things correctly or not, that was a fascinating temperature check of the views of aviation lovers.

Our first question, "Were you surprised by the news?," was overwhelmingly on the side of it being no surprise at all, with 83% of respondents expressing that they expected the cancellation to happen. As for the timing of it, again, poll participants were strongly supportive of EAA's timing, with 77% saying that the organization didn't announce the scrubbing of the event too soon. This was a "yes" or "no" question, so 17% said they did make the call too soon.

On a more personal note, we asked readers if the pandemic would've prevented them from attending, and more than three-quarter (77%) said that coronavirus concerns would indeed have stopped them from attending. Again, the other side of the coin got the remainder of the responses, 22% [ not 23 due to rounding errors] said the fear of the virus wouldn't have stopped them from going to OSH.

The next question was the controversial one, and it proved so distracting and upsetting to our readers that we took the unprecedented step of eliminating the question mid-poll and replacing it with two questions. That original query was:

"If you would have normally attended AirVenture, would you have attended this year if EAA had held the gathering (presumably with the State of Wisconsin's blessings) despite the coronavirus circumstances?

And the choices were!

No. I would not have attended it. Social distancing will need to be observed and a gathering of this size on July 20^th wouldn't be safe for my family or me.

or!

Yes. Social distancing needs to be relaxed or made completely voluntary, and EAA should have given attendees and exhibitors the choice and not made it for them.

But readers took offense in a way that we hadn't anticipated, many of them saying that they both wouldn't have attended and thought it was okay for Oshkosh to hold the event anyway, a point of view we hadn't accounted for.

So, again, we created two questions to replace that one and eliminated the presumption we incorrectly introduced into the survey.

To the first of the replacement questions, "Should EAA have held the event regardless and left it up to the individuals to attend, or was the cancellation the right thing to do?," was again, confirmation of the participants' faith in EAA's response, with 76% saying that EAA did the right thing in making the call, with 22% saying that it should've left it up to the attendees to decide. Interestingly, these numbers correspond closely with those asking about U.S. citizens' views on mandated social distancing, so perhaps our results shouldn't have been too surprising.

Finally, our fifth question, which asked the hypothetical, "Had EAA decided to go ahead with the 2020 event, would it, in your opinion, have been a successful one?," was one-sided, with 86% of respondents feeling that the event would've been "successful on a much smaller scale" or that it would have been "a sad one with few attendees and exhibitors."

Thanks to all who took part in our poll.

Plane & PilotStaff