Come on Emir ! Ignore that example if you wish. Don’t I have a point ?
No. The thing I like on our fly-ins is that we don’t necessarily share any common view, even about flying, and yet we have great conversations, sharing experiences and overall we have good time.
I think Terbang didn’t feel at home there, despite being the mecca for aviators.
I think it was @Dan who was a bit reserved about OSH in his post. All in all I really enjoyed the whole week in North 40. I must say, I also met people there I will never be friends with but I guess that will be that way where ever you go.
I believe you have the “people only attend because they don’t want to lose a down payment part” wrong, @Peter
The date and program is published far in advance.
There’s advertising.
There’s something in it for everybody.
And then people attend because the migration provides activities that are limited to the event. In other words, the presentations, discourse, training and social activities are happening then and there, and if one cancels, it’s a year’s wait. The flying part of “fly” in has a strong base at these events. It’s a celebration of flying, sweetened with some amenable (luxury) enjoyment tours.
With EuroGA “fly ins”, the difference between going at the date or a week later means dinner with or without a few others. That’s perfectly fine, but the threshold to scrap it is lower. The setup is casual, and so is participation. There’s a few “hey, let’s fly there at this date, who’s in?” calls, and except for dinner everyone goes about their thing. Perfectly fine, but it explains why it’s usually only an handful of people showing up.
Emails go out to all who have authorised them (~800 currently).
Recently we tried to not have a forum thread (to make the numbers of “not going people” more manageable) but I think there are better ways to do that (not least because many people have emails disabled).
We don’t lay on activities; for that we would need an organiser, and charge a load of €€€. But also from what I have seen a high % of people don’t enjoy these at all. The grim faces in the group photos tell a story…
The threshold to scrap going to our fly-ins is zero, which I think is relevant and is central to the difficulty of planning how many will come.
We’ve had lots of very good ones: 30-40 turning up. The right location, good wx, and a local language organiser. Elba 2018 was the last big one.
Good point about announcing it earlier. Many people fill their “filofax” 6 months ahead 
On the thread topic, the answer still seems to be “very little”. I think hotel booking (and charging a hefty deposit) is silly. Or is it? Who really finds booking.com too much effort?
This was discussed at Aero last week.
One has to accept that EuroGA cannot emulate the “Cirrus method” of a €400 “participation fee” and laying on a programme, plus a “partner programme” (a bus to the shops for the ladies). These communities have a whole ecosystem. Many call it a “church” and I’d say that a good description of how it is run in the US – a lot of evangelism. At Aero a big chunk of the stand was selling clothing!
Then you get the TBM fly-ins which elevate the above by another huge factor.
We don’t have that and we never will. One suggestion made to me at Aero is to make a small non-refundable charge to interested people, say €20-50 per aircraft, and treat that as a donation to EuroGA. Since we are almost entirely donation funded now (web hosting is about 1k/year) the idea was that this would be acceptable. It would help solve the problem of 30 people coming but only 5 actually do, which makes organising e.g. airport parking completely impossible. Montenegro 2019 was a perfect illustration. Any views on this?
In reality, 10-15 people counts as a success. It is actually a really nice group. The problem is that covid has taken half of those out of flying. So we need to do more work on that…
Peter wrote:
One suggestion made to me at Aero is to make a small non-refundable charge to interested people, say €20-50 per aircraft, and treat that as a donation to EuroGA.
Go for it, and see what happens after a few trials.
Peter wrote:
Any views on this?
Yes, though it will be at the risk of repeating myself, as you do…
Why would charging whatever fee bind people and force them to attend a fly-in? The fear of losing their money? Where is, if any, the benefit for a fly-in itself?
What would happen to the pilot unsure if can get thru, but finally makes it ok and land at said airfield without having paid his “non-refundable” charge… will he/she get stoned or lynched straight away?
What will happen with the low experienced VFR pilot that is pushing to get thru as he doesn’t want to “loose” his fee? Were something bad to happen, would somebody loose some sleep on it?
I hope most of us are happy to make a donation(s) to EuroGA, and this is as support to the running of the forum.
Peter wrote:
It would help solve the problem of 30 people coming but only 5 actually do, which makes organising e.g. airport parking completely impossible.
No, it would not. Again, why would it? Where is the problem? Following your example for parking needs, my airfield could easily accommodate a fly-in with 20 or so aircraft. And if I’d be the “organiser”, I would do nothing, nada, nix… the participants would fly-in, and park, by themselves. The spots are marked on the ground, and on the airfield chart. Grown-up licensed pilots, good boys and girls Unless the field and its apron are minute, there is nothing to “organise” really.
The major negative factor must be the disparity of the EuroGA pilots. Not only thru their aircraft, but also thru their abilities, ratings, experience, taste, etc. Pilot-renter, pilot-owner, Learjet to UL, IR pilot flying only IFR, VFR pilot flying only VFR, IFR pilot not flying in weather, VFR pilot not flying in any kind of weather, and many more variants. To reunite that bunch on a forum is one thing, to have the same ones take part in a fly-in, another…
I have admitteldy not been here for a time long enough to fully comprehend the difficulty of having a successful fly-in. Maybe @Peter, or other long timers, could have a look at the past successful fly-ins, and try to identify the beneficial factors? Location, dates, weather, and who is attending are the obvious criteria… others?
Dan wrote:
What will happen with the low experienced VFR pilot that is pushing to get thru as he doesn’t want to “loose” his fee? Were something bad to happen, would somebody loose some sleep on it?
I can testify that, as a renter, just flying to a fly-in is at least 2k€ at the current rates, so a 50€ donation wouldn’t come to mind if I need to divert. EuroGA is worth a 50€ annual donation anyway.
What would come to mind is :
I don’t want to miss an event I had so much trouble fitting in our schedule and finally get stuck in a desolate, rainy airstrip with a hungry family while you guys have fun and my paid-for hotel reservation get lost. She will be even more reluctant to the next flying trip so my license will be useless and I would rather stick to [add a hobby]
A 50€ donation won’t make a difference to my get-there-itis.
I think, taking a broad view, it probably isn’t too hard to get a decent group “interested” so long as the location is reasonably attractive and not too far away (not some Greek island for example). The tools are:
It is harder post-covid because – as I often say – a lot of the most experienced pilots have just packed up, bought boats, etc. But it probably isn’t the main problem, which is getting say 20 with some level of committment.
Obviously if the wx is a washout then ~100% VFR flyers will cancel and just a few IFR flyers will come. Venice 2019 was a great example, where ~50 were “coming” and we got about 3-4. Nothing one can do about that. I am told that on the €400 Cirrus fly-ins a lot of people buy backup airline tickets! But nobody will do that for EuroGA. Well, I did it for Venice
So in between these, we have the committment issue in the absence of a wx factor.
I am strongly against using money to make people fly in bad conditions and I am sure 3-digit amounts would have that effect. Frankly, I also think it generates tricky political situations where the organiser will come under pressure to do refunds, which gets extra tricky given that he has spent much of the money on hotel block-booking…
I think some nominal amount like €20-50 would limit the size of the group to those who want to come and are in a position to do so. This may surprise some, but in 2013 we did a La Rochelle fly-in which involved a vote (David did a nice voting site for the destination) and afterwards it became evident that most people voting for La R were not in a position to fly there anyway (no plane, etc). People routinely spend this much on a taxi…
There is a thing with organizing free events, whatever they maybe. When it’s free, people will happily say that they are interested in coming, but will not feel committed in any sort of way so they will drop it if anything else pops-up (grandma made pancakes, you know…)
If you have to pay a fee, even a small one, then a lot of people will feel committed and join. That the sunken cost fallacy, it works qiite well.
As for myself, there are 2 possibilities for me to make it possible to join an EuroGa flyin: going by CAT or having it in Norway/Sweden in which case I would gladly join with the C185, if the weather cooperates. But for any other location, the flight cost on GA and the time spent would be too big (just to get to the South part of Norway from here, it’s a 3 hours flight).
