Jack Pelton, EAA Chairman and CEO, addressed the press this afternoon on the current status of not just AirVenture 2025, but EAA itself. He started with a recent economic impact study that shows EAA contributes $257 million to the local economy annually. That contrasts with the last such study in 2017 that showed the association brought $171 million to the region per year. Pelton jokingly risked invoking the wrath of local residents by saying, “That’s more than the [Green Bay] Packers.”
He next discussed a two-hour-plus conversation he had with U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former Wisconsin congressman, about the upcoming decision on Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification (MOSAIC). Pelton said MOSAIC’s plan to change the current weight parameter for Light Sport aircraft to a performance-based model will be a “game changer” for general aviation. He described it as “Sport Pilot 2.0.” He said that at tomorrow’s 12:30 public session with Duffy at the EAA Member Center, the secretary will “hopefully say that MOSAIC has been signed.”
Pelton praised this year’s AirVenture salute to public benefit flying. “I didn’t realize there were so many groups,” he said, calling out as an example an organization of Robinson Helicopter operators who hovered into action during the North Carolina flooding to fly rescue and relief missions.
He also addressed the unleaded fuel controversy, citing the three main contenders for becoming the unleaded fuel of choice, and some of what he described as the underappreciated complications of gaining industrywide approval—specifically, the issues of production and distribution of the fuel,
Finally, Pelton applauded the continued and renewed success of the EAA Young Eagles Program. “From the beginning,” he said, “when Tom [Poberezny] and Greg Anderson conceived the effort, the goal was not to make kids pilots. The goal was to fly a lot of kids.” He said that part of the hope was to raise the 20% completion rate for private pilot students to 80% through scholarships and support from the 890 local EAA Chapters, which he referred to as “our churches.”
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