WATSONVILLE — A group of pilots at Watsonville Municipal Airport said Saturday that they will organize the next fly-in, which is now tentatively scheduled for October.
The event will begin on a Friday night with a spaghetti dinner, and continue the next day with a pancake breakfast before an open house-type event.
The vote by the pilots — who came from as far away as Fresno and Salinas — took place during a noon meeting at the Experimental Aircraft Association hangar.
While the pilots voted affirmatively to host the fly-in, they were nearly unanimous in agreeing that an air show is currently a financial impossibility.
Airport Director Rayvon Williams said he called the meeting to gauge whether the pilots would be willing to take the mantle of Wings Over Watsonville, or a similar event, at the airport.
One issue was the late date. Anyone wanting to hold an event of this magnitude by October has only six months to do it.
“It’s been done for 50 years, and it’s been successful,” Williams said. “But we’re literally out of runway.”
Williams told the pilots that the airport would pay for the fire and police department presence and for emergency services to be at the event. It will also provide an air traffic control tower to help with the increased amount of arrivals.
But it does not have the resources to pay for the rest, or to provide and manage the dozens of volunteers required for such an event, Williams said.
“I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the airport office will not be doing Wings Over Watsonville this year,” he said.
That responsibility must now fall on a group of pilots that is willing to take on the voluminous amount of duties, Williams said.
These include renting port-a-potties, recruiting extra security, putting on the pancake and spaghetti meals and organizing the vendors who come for the day, said Hank Wempe, who formerly managed the air show.
It also requires fundraising efforts, recruiting and managing volunteers and producing publicity to draw visitors.
“I don’t think people realize what goes into it,” Wempe said. “We’ve proven every year that we can get 3,000 people to show up, but we can’t do it with 3,000. We need 5,000.”
At its peak, the fly-in and air show brought in dozens of large military aircraft for display and put an aerobatic demonstration in the skies above the city.
But the cost and logistics proved too much of a burden, and the aerobatic portion of the event ended in 2015, one year after celebrating its 50th anniversary.
An open house rebranded as “Wings Over Watsonville” started in 2016, with a car show and static airplane display that drew thousands. The event was significantly smaller last year, due in part to summer temperatures that topped 100 degrees.
Pilot Theresa Byers, who has also been active in the air show and fly-in, said the event can showcase the importance of the airport, which served as a vital hub in and out of the county during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.
It can also be a way to inspire new generations of pilots, she said.
Holding an event at the airport is also a continuation of an event that has been a part of Watsonville’s culture for more than a half century, Byers said.
“We want to continue the tradition,” she said.
