Lifetime Benifits

[FlyingRon]

The EAA lifetime membershp is perhaps the WORST deal in the industry. It's over 32x the single membership price. AOPA is 20 (which is typical with many of these organizations). Another organization threw in a free spouse membership with mine (so it's even less than 20). The EAA is second only to the NRA for how much they gouge people, though periodically the NRA discounts their life memberships which makes it a fairly decent deal.

[Frank Giger]

I am sufficiently old enough to where I did the math and it's cheaper to pay by the year - at 50.

[RickFE]

I thought about a lifetime membership for my grandson instead of me.

[wyoranch]

I thought about a lifetime membership for my grandson instead of me.

Not to sound petty, but with the policy changes that have been flying around. Your grandson's lifetime membership will probably be changed from lifetime to ' lifetime or 15 years whichever occurs first'

[Kyle Boatright]

I am sufficiently old enough to where I did the math and it's cheaper to pay by the year - at 50.

Full disclosure: I'm not a lifetime member.

That said, access to the lifetime member's dinner and a couple of the other perks really set the membership apart from an annual renewal.

Regardless, I would be very disappointed if they are changing the benefits for paid-in members.

[Jim Hann]

The EAA lifetime membershp is perhaps the WORST deal in the industry. It's over 32x the single membership price. AOPA is 20 (which is typical with many of these organizations). Another organization threw in a free spouse membership with mine (so it's even less than 20). The EAA is second only to the NRA for how much they gouge people, though periodically the NRA discounts their life memberships which makes it a fairly decent deal.

Interesting, when I went through my organizations looking at life memberships I swear that AOPA was $1,500 and there was only one lifetime membership. I remember it being by far the most expensive, with AMA second and EAA the cheapest (at the time.) Since I already had enough years in, I received the $100 discount from EAA also.

As for the dinner, I am disappointed in the changes, I also don't attend to watch the airshow and will only go to the dinner or nothing. I will make my feeling known if I see the appropriate people.

Jim

[Eric Cernjar]

Hi All,

First I want to say I'm sorry to hear that some of you feel that the Lifetime Membership isn't providing the value that you expected. That's certainly not the intent, but I understand your concerns. Regarding the Flightline Pavilion specifically, we've been pretty careful not to over-promise on this venue. Nikki Watts has been the steward for our LT program for many years, and as long as she's been there I know she's been very careful to tell members at AirVenture that the pavilion access would be there for that particular year, but that she can't promise it will be there every year.

Over time the Lifetime Member base has grown significantly, and it's caused a few challenges. One challenge is we realized there is a group of LT members who know about the pavilion access due to a conversation happening with staff, but it wasn't something we widely promoted and really was something only a handful of LT members would even know to take advantage of. We didn't feel that was fair to the rest of the LT group, and we had to look at this as a whole to be fair to all. With the growth in LT membership that we've seen, we simply wouldn't have the capacity to roll this out for week-long access to all LT members, so we made the call to formally roll this out to all LT members for one day of access. Not only does this give everyone a chance to experience the pavilion, but it also shifted some demand from the LT Dinner to the pavilion. If you've attended the dinner lately, you know that we're reaching capacity and need to find a way to accommodate everyone.

One other note regarding the pavilion and its intent. The main purpose of this tent is as a benefit to annual donors to EAA. The threshold for week-long access to the pavilion is for donors who contribute at least $2,500 annually. Years ago we saw we had a little bit of extra room and wanted to provide a thank you to members who recently became Lifetime Members, but as I said we quickly realized this was something only a select few knew about and didn't feel that was fair.

Again I definitely don't want anyone to feel they're being taken advantage of, and we very much appreciate the commitment our Lifetime Members have shown towards GA and EAA. I hope this clears the air a bit, and if any of you want to speak with me I can either respond when possible on here or you can also contact me directly at ecernjar@eaa.org.

Thanks,
Eric

[glider90]

The best deal in the EAA was the Century Club. My dad was a member, and I really wish he would have thought to try to sign me up instead of him! That membership paid for itself many times over before he passed away in 2006. For those not familiar, the Century Club was (at that time I believe, it did go up later in the program) 100 dollars a year for 10 years. As Century Club member you enjoyed all the benefits of a lifetime member, plus complimentary camping and weekly admission to the convention! As a family of five that came to Oshkosh every year for 10 or more days it was a great deal. I know my mom said there were years with a young family that the payment would be hard to scrape together, but it was all worth it. As I recall dad was number 307, and I think they only did 1000 members. It was a fund raising effort to get the museum funding in place as I recall.