AirVenture 2023 Wrap-Up

If there was anything in particular that characterized this year’s AirVenture for me it was the emergence of a more positive outlook. Much of last year’s uncertainty about the supply chain and pandemic recovery efforts has faded and people were once again talking enthusiastically about the future of aviation rather than how to salvage what they could. For the first time in a while, there was a lot of excitement about where we as an industry are going.

Along those lines, one of the things that came up quite a bit at the show was the MOSAIC proposal, which would significantly update and expand LSA regulations. Reactions to the proposal were generally positive, with companies interested in the opportunities MOSAIC represents and pilots cautiously optimistic about the outcome. The feeling seemed to be that it has the potential to be a step forward for general aviation.

Walking around AirVenture, I always love overhearing exclamations about how beautiful this plane is or how amazing it is to see it all in person—and this show had a lot of that. That enthusiasm, not to mention the resilience demonstrated by the industry time and time again, is no small part of what makes aviation special.

--Kate O’Connor

From the perch at Aviation Consumer, my focus at the big show is always on the products, and more recently the health of the avionics supply chain—which was on life support at last year’s show. While not entirely out of the woods, vendors I talked with this year had more normal heart rates. For those who played the right cards and didn’t choke along with the supply, it’s back to delivering fresh new products, or at least getting back to building them. Dynon Avionics finally finished its next-gen small-screen D30 EFIS, adding a long-awaited newer backup for the HDX suite. 

Garmin’s Jim Alpiser told me the company’s most wanted gear is flowing to the dealer network. It even had a new product—the GHA 15—proving that radar altimeters haven’t died forever. But the flagship announcement was the first retrofit Autoland and Autothrottle system. These days I’m too jaded to be awed by avionics. But flying shotgun with Garmin’s Jessica Koss in the company’s B200 King Air—the first Autoland interface in a twin and on the G1000 NXi—my eyes were even wider than they were when flying behind a pre-certification Autoland in a Piper turboprop back in 2019. Smooth, precise and one heck of an engineering feat when you consider the deep interface between the engines, avionics and airframe. Yeah, I’d say Garmin’s holding down that prestigious Collier Trophy.

For something that’s a lot simpler to pull off, a big surprise came from the Honeywell exhibit with a $5200 drop-in replacement for the venerable KX155/165 VHF radio. Yes, the KX200 is many years late to the party, but perhaps not too late for owners struggling to keep their failing KX155s working without wanting to spend thousands to repair a 1990s-vintage rig. There are a lot of KX155s and if the wiring is good, I think for some a KX200 replacement could make sense—perhaps more so for lower budgets that can’t handle a teardown installation. Going bigger, Honeywell has been racking up over 120 flight test hours with its Anthem integrated and scalable avionics suite intended for a broad market segment. It flew its Pilatus test bed into the show with a functional—although very preproduction—Anthem as proof.

Speaking of work, Cirrus announced that it built a private pilot training course to bring new pilots into the Cirrus life. Cirrus’s Matt Bergwall told me plenty of new Cirrus owners start from scratch in an SR piston and the lucky and skilled ones eventually move into the Vision Jet, so it developed a course for its worldwide field training network to get the qualified buyers started. It ought to reassure insurers who might otherwise raise an eyebrow at a student in a new SR22. A big focus and challenge for students, I think, will be not only learning how to fly the plane the Cirrus way, but also learning how to work the embedded Perspective avionics. That’ll be a lot to absorb for many zero-time buyers. Still, I think Cirrus has a good concept here—and another clever marketing tool to sell new planes.

If AirVenture 2023 is any gauge, I flew far away from that hot and crowded show cautiously optimistic that the market is nursing itself back into decent shape. 

--Larry Anglisano      

I spent a lot of time at AirVenture chasing social media reports that chaos had descended on aircraft arrivals at Oshkosh and that the coveted bucket list system of wing wags and colored dots had been irrevocably stained (along with dozens of pairs of underwear). In truth, however, everyone I talked to had heard the stories but either hadn't experienced them or wrote them off to the normal consequence of packing 10,000 aircraft into a single airport for a week. 

Certainly there were some pucker-worthy moments, but they were attributed to the kind of minor mishaps that are thankfully uncommon at AirVenture. One aircraft had a flat tire, another landed with the gear partially retracted in its amphibious floats. One guy will go down in history as the first anyone has heard of to land against the traffic on Oshkosh's busiest runway. Even EAA's own Ford Trimotor wasn't immune. It got stuck in the infield briefly while taxiing on the grass. All of these were enough for controllers to scatter the traffic and cause some inconvenience but none were life-threatening. So, as I prepared to write this on Saturday, I was ready to exult at the lack of fatalities and ask our dear readers for a little perspective on what they might have experienced coming in. 

And, just like that, the perspective changed. It will be a while before we know exactly how four people died in two accidents within hours of each other, but if you're sitting comfortably at home with an extra hour in your logbook because of a diversion or hold while coming in to AirVenture, it's worth thinking about how much worse it could have been.

On behalf of everyone at the Flying Media Group, our condolences to the loved ones of the victims and heartfelt appreciation to those who jumped in to help under some dangerous circumstances.

--Russ Niles