FSS at Oshkosh this year?

[flibmeister]

The FSS briefers are Lockheed-Martin employees not FAA.

True, but the FAA pays for L-M to send them.

Ever since L-M has had the FSS contract, there are four events that were "grandfathered" and automatically covered for a remote FSS operation: Oshkosh, Sun 'n' Fun, Albuquerque Balloon Festival, and the Copperstate Fly-In. Many other events had an FSS presence, of course, but they had to apply annually, provide justification, and if selected they were covered out of a separate budget.

I'm the air ops guy for Copperstate, and here's the text of the message I received in April from the FAA Ops specialist in charge of remote FSS deployment:

"I am sorry to inform you that the FAA will not be able to support your event this year do to limited funding."


I suspect that the folks at Oshkosh received the same message, although it's possible that their much higher volume and worse weather spared them.

[tonycondon]

Are you sure this is still the case? A lot changed between April and now and I'm pretty sure the FAA was given the blank check to rob the airport improvement fund not only for ATC but for whatever else they wanted to pay for (except for sending controllers to Oshkosh )

True, but the FAA pays for L-M to send them.

Ever since L-M has had the FSS contract, there are four events that were "grandfathered" and automatically covered for a remote FSS operation: Oshkosh, Sun 'n' Fun, Albuquerque Balloon Festival, and the Copperstate Fly-In. Many other events had an FSS presence, of course, but they had to apply annually, provide justification, and if selected they were covered out of a separate budget.

I'm the air ops guy for Copperstate, and here's the text of the message I received in April from the FAA Ops specialist in charge of remote FSS deployment:

"I am sorry to inform you that the FAA will not be able to support your event this year do to limited funding."


I suspect that the folks at Oshkosh received the same message, although it's possible that their much higher volume and worse weather spared them.