Organisers of AirVenture Australia are confident the event will go ahead as planned despite their major sponsor withdrawing last week.
OzRunways, who had taken out naming-rights sponsorship, reduced their investment to that of only a normal exhibitor after a controversy over an exclusivity deal was made public. The action caused a funding shortfall that put the event into doubt.
Last week, one of the organising groups, the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia (SAAA), called on the aviation community to contribute money to make up the shortfall and ensure AirVenture Australia went ahead.
"Two days ago we reached out to the aviation community for, in effect, 'crowd funding' to support the event financially," SAAA president Tony White said last Friday.
"The pledges received to date have met the potential shortfall – indicating to us that the event and organisers had the general community support. That is, to continue as an open venue run in the same spirit as the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh fly-in in America.
"This process will take some days to complete and we would expect more positive reports from sponsors and the organiser supported by ourselves over that time."
AirVenture organiser David Young told Australian Flying that he expected the event to go ahead at Narromine on 19-21 October as planned, and that funding announcements would be made in the coming days once they had been confirmed.
Young also said the show was shaping up to be possibly the largest general aviation fly-in Australia has ever seen, with more exhibitors that OzKosh 2016, AirVenture Australia's predecessor event.