Wings over Illawarra 2020 has been canceled despite already having been postponed from May until November.
Organiser's Bright Events had been hoping that pandemic conditions in NSW would improve enough to allow the air show to go ahead at Shellharbour Airport, but today announced that the event would not go ahead, describing the decision as "heart-breaking."
“Over the years we have faced many challenges with fire destroying our previous business, the Aviator Lounge, which was a restaurant based at the Shellharbour Airport; unprecedented wind in 2014, the first year we took over Wings Over Illawarra; floods in 2015 forcing us to cancel Wings Over Illawarra; and of course rain last year, but this has been by far our greatest challenge,” said Mark Bright, event director.
“With the postponement from May to November, it was hoped that the health risk of the coronavirus pandemic would have eased sufficiently for Wings Over Illawarra 2020 to proceed. Many months of planning go into an event such as this, and in 2020 we have had to plan twice to consider the extra infrastructure that we believed would be necessary for the November event.”
“After lengthy discussions with NSW Health, it became apparent that we would be unable to safely proceed with the event in 2020.”
Bright Events has already started planning for the 2021 Wings over Illawarra with planned dates of 13-14 November, only two weeks before the rescheduled Australian International Airshow at Avalon.