If you have never been to EAA’s AirVenture at Oshkosh, you need to go – period – full stop! If you can’t attend the entire event, you should at least plan to be there for Wednesday or Saturday so you can witness the night airshow/drone display/firework display. This show will absolutely blow your mind! I have been to the New Year’s Eve firework display in New York City, but hands down, AirVenture’s night show is stratospherically better. (Check the calendar at eaa.org to ensure the schedule hasn’t changed.)
From ideas hatched around a kitchen table by a small group of aviation enthusiasts in 1953, the Experimental Aircraft Association has become an international force in aviation culminating its annual events with AirVenture every summer in the association’s hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It is an awesome experience with awesome aircraft, amazing attendance from all over the world (over 650,000 estimated for 2024), and absolutely breathtaking spectacles in the air and on the ground.
I first arrived late on Monday evening just as all the vendors were closing, but I still wanted to walk around and figure out where everything was situated. The day’s airshow was still in progress and who doesn’t love watching airplanes fly around? If you are reading this, I expect you have some interest in aviation. I’m used to walking around these types of events and “pounding the pavement’” but I was not prepared for the size of AirVenture. Once I arrived at the main area, the size of the displays for the larger companies was astounding. Large buildings erected in weeks just for this one-weeklong event. To call these corporate display areas “booths” is as great an understatement as it is to call AirVenture a “fly-in.” Many of the free-standing “booths” even have air conditioning, catering and lounge spaces.
My day one was Tuesday and I hit the pavement early. Most of the vendors are in a quadrangle of four large hangers that are abeam the main entrance strip. These hangers are flanked by large and small outdoor display areas representing every imaginable aviation-related enterprise, many of which are general aviation manufactures displaying their latest aircraft.
Closer to the runway, you start to see a B-52 bomber off in the distance. This aircraft is on static display along with several other military aircraft at Boeing Plaza. If you head right at Boeing Plaza, you’ll end up walking through the Vintage aircraft and eventually the ultralights. If you turn left, you’ll see the parking area for the aerobatic planes that perform in the daily afternoon airshow. As you continue north, you will see the iconic brown arch and all the homebuilt aircraft. Eventually this runs right into Warbird Alley, which is probably the biggest collection of vintage warbirds you’ll see anywhere at one time. The quality and quantity of history here is just amazing.
By now your feet ache and your legs are tired from walking, but don’t worry, you can hop on a tram that will take you almost anywhere around the AirVenture grounds that you want to go. So, pull out your map or open your app to see which tram you need to hop on to get to where you want to go next.
There are plenty of food options, including some with bars, music and dancing in an entire area dedicated to just that in a section appropriately named SOS. The “north forty” is another sight to behold. Thousands of light aircraft parked in a huge open field with tents pitched under many wings becomes a city of pilots and their families for the week. OSH becomes the busiest airport in the world during this event. The scope and scale are over the top – every top!
Wednesday meant meeting with a lot more people, networking and checking out more planes. This place is most definitely an airplane geeks heaven! After such a full and stimulating day, I hadn’t planned to stay for the night show, but thankfully, some friends convinced me to stay. As I mentioned before, you will not regret staying for the night show! It is utterly indescribable, so I won’t even try. Leaving the parking lot seemed an almost an impossible task. Since I arrived very early in the morning, my car was at the front of the lot. First in last out, but luckily, I found a shortcut and was able to punch out ahead of the masses.
Do add EAA’s AirVenture to your bucket list. I’m already planning to go next year but I plan to stay longer and hope to rent an RV so I can stay on the grounds and enjoy some aviation-themed glamping.
All photography credit: Craig Pieper
