How much support are people looking for on a fly-in / how to make fly-ins work

I have to evaluate, but AFAIK now they planned a fuel stop for everybody in Split. I guess they leave the flight planninhg to the pilots but communicate tips over the website. Will telll when i know.

I suppose it depends on the event and the organizer.

Here so far the Fly Ins have been informal and everyone looked after themselfs. That means maximum flexibility and few if any pressure. Every crew is responsible for their own planning and hotel e.t.c

In other places Fly Ins are organized to the last detail only to derail on the day due to various cancellations. Some ask money up front to give people an “incentive” to actually show up. IMHO this puts unnecessary pressure on folks.

I think in the end common sense should prevail. Common hotel reservations can help to get the group together, rather than have people spread out over the whole landscape. Also the one organizing this can pool questions to the destination airport and even maybe negotiate group tarifs, aircraft parking and so on. Some airports prefer to know about fly ins in advance so they can incorporate them into their planning if need be. Some airports may well be willing to help with either reduced taxes or with organizing hotels or parking e.t.c. I did this once in Nördlingen (D) which is a small airfield north of Ulm, they were extremely happy to help and actually got some folks mobilized to welcome us, drive us to the city and back the next day.

So it’s difficult to say what the “right” amount of organisation is. With Fly Ins I would always keep thinks quite non-commital as cancelation rates are quite big with the typical European weather.

Personally I find time is my most precious commodity. I like the idea of someone reducing the time burden of planning everything and would even consider paying a fee for such a service. It’s much like a travel agent’s service; sure you can spend your time surfing the net and researching but in my current world I find I am increasingly attracted to having a 20 minute conversation with someone who will then proffer me a few options based on what I have told them.

Interesting. I cannot even imagine letting somebody else plan my free time, to me that’s part of the fun. And my hotel bookings … I think I did all hotel bookings for a 3 week tour of Japan with the family this summer in two hours … via booking.com.

Also I don’t require much support. I prefer to plan my own trip.

Here there are two issues playing why I don’t manage to come to fly ins.

1. Time.
I work 1 weekend on two. And long weekends are really rare. I also have to plan my holiday at least 6 months till one year ago and I have to take it by a whole week. One day is almost never possible. This makes I almost never have opportunities to make trips longer than one week.
Mostly the fly-ins are on short term organised, and time is the issue, due to work I cannot be flexible on date. (This was for example the issue with Greece in September. The date was so close but I couldn’t switch so I missed again and I went to Greece, Portoroz and Turkey a few days later)
If the date is planned long before the actual date (a few months), I can sometimes arrange something on my work, but then, we come to point 2.

2. Budget
I don’t have an endless budget and flying is expensive. When I have the opportunity to fly a trip of more than 2 days, I have to choose. The fly-ins are mostly far away, so they take more than one day and I also have my own bucketlist (EGHE, EGJA, EGPH, EIWT, ENHV, LFMD, LFTZ, LSZA, LXGB, a 360 around the magnetic north, sollas airstrip, Barra airport, …) So when I have to choose, I mostly take a destination of my own bucketlist, combined with the visit of a few days to the town.

So for a trip I don’t require any assistance at all. I can manage it myself very well. But I do like to know the date and destination a few months before.

I could have been done anything around 300 NM from my homebase EDLE for one overnight (family reason) VFR, so e. g. Colmar or Speyer could have been worked out for me – could have been…..

But I like it, when it’s kept “open”, like “if you feel like and have the time, you’re welcome”. No need for a travel agency.

That said I prefer to pitch up my tent beside my aircraft anyway – romance of flying

A bit of a spread of opinion here as your might expect.

Peter – I think you’re right about the psychology of it all. In my experience, people don’t value stuff that’s ‘free’ and where my business has arranged for people to come along to an event that doesn’t cost anything, I get at least 25% drop out rate, usually the night before or on the day. Where we have charged (in advance) for the same event, the drop out rate reduces to less than 10%.

I don’t believe that most people need lots of help with flight planning, that said you could offer a package to include recomended VFR / IFR routes, any gotchas on those routes, a dinner (prepaid) with an after dinner speech and a deposit on a mid range hotel room (to keep everyone together) and charge say £100 for all of that. That would also test people’s commitment / seriouness in attending rather than just saying ‘sounds great’ on a forum.

I’m a firm believer that if you give someone something for nothing they value it precisely at that.