Considering how challenging it’s been to get and keep the Kansas Flight Festival going, it took some nerve for the Wichita City Council to vote Tuesday to demand a name change back to the Wichita Aviation Festival for 2006 as it cut the event’s funding by $50,000. Council members’ concerns about cost overruns and giving the city more credit for its sponsorship had merit. But more gratitude was due Wichita Festivals Inc., which took over the aviation event from the city for 2005 and has made changes to help it become more self- and corporate-supported. Whatever it’s called, this celebration of all things airborne remains vital to the Air Capital’s tourism goals and quality of life.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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7 Comments
The Kansas Flight Festival was a failure in my opinion. Our Festivals and Airshows in the past had attendence around 200,000 people. But this year, it went to what? 10,000 people! That is a drastic change, and I knew that is what they will get for charging people $10.
You have to remember, Joe, we live in the town of “if it ain’t free, I ain’t goin’” Witness the attendance at Wranglers games on free ticket nights, vs. normal nights when tickets are as cheap as $4. How many Wichitans gripe about the River Festival button now at $3. Oh my!
You have to remember, Joe, we live in the town of “if it ain’t free, I ain’t goin’” Witness the attendance at Wranglers games on free ticket nights, vs. normal nights when tickets are as cheap as $4. How many Wichitans gripe about the River Festival button now at $3. Oh my!
Please. That air festival was a joke this year..For this to be touted as the aviation capital of the world…Jabara is a private airport. Air shows should be held at McConnell. I think the reason it was not held there(too many on duty) was BUNK.WHen you look at those festivals at McConnell in the past and then this one, you would think the BASE WAS CLOSED.THere were so many people at McConnell and we went EVERY DAY IT WAS THERE, but we certainly did not bother to go to Jabara to see the fake bands and non-headliners.Also, it has ALWAYS BEEN FREE..you have to expect to hear some noise when you suddenly want to MAKE MONEY off of this event.
Airshow = air acts, i.e., SnowBirds, THunderbirds, Blue Angels, military aircraft
Airshow does not = fake bands, tiny airport, lack of militay aircraft in a military base town.
I didn’t say anything about the quality of the festival (agreed it was lame compared to the ones at McConnell), but my point was how conditioned we Wichitans seem to be to only coming out in droves for “freebies” with very few exceptions.
City needs to conserve money. After all we are building an arena. lol