LAKELAND, Florida — About 200,000 people from more than 60 countries visited the 42nd Annual SUN ‘n FUN International Fly-In & Expo, held April 5-10 at Lakeland-Linder Regional Airport.
Other numbers of note:
- Brazil, Canada and United Kingdom once again had the highest amount of visitors
- 251 attendees took advantage of the free ticket offer for active military available April 5-7
- 7,530 attendees took advantage of discounted ticket pricing available to active military, retired military and veterans
- SUN ‘n FUN ordered more than 400 Portalets, 25 light towers, 412 golf carts, and approximately 150 tents
- SUN ‘n FUN distributed 90,000 bottles of water and approximately 19,000 sandwiches to volunteers
- 677 individuals from 28 states registered for the Career Fair
- 3,400 students went on tours
- 512 students attended the F-22 and Golden Knights Symposium
- Approximately 50,000 attendees visited Aerospace Discovery at the Florida Air Museum and/or the 727 Piedmont Aerospace Experience
- Volunteer ham radio operators spoke with people in 43 states and 18 countries
- 440 media representatives attended from 16 countries
- 5,988 people attended 331 forums
- 3,228 people attended 56 workshops
- More than 9,000 aircraft movements took place
- 494 exhibitors participated
Social Media Statistics
- Total Reach (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) = Over 2 million
- Total Impressions = almost 10 million
- Engagement Rate = more than double the normal amount
- Approximately 3,000 new fans were added
- 2,000 images were posted on Instagram by fans.
Volunteer hours will be totaled and released later this year after the annual chairmen’s meeting, officials noted.
“All the proceeds from the fly-in and other events on our Expo campus are reinvested into education programs and activities, including college scholarships used to achieve aerospace-related degrees,” said John “Lites” Leenhouts, President/CEO of SUN ‘n FUN. “As of today, we have awarded over 125 scholarships, soloed over 55 students, and created 49 new private pilots. Through these efforts and more we are building a brighter future through aviation.”
Next year’s fly-in is scheduled for April 4-9, 2017.
I love SnF. Been flying or driving there since the mid ’90s and I hope to being able to go there every year going forward. As always, the Homebuilt camping area was superbly run and it was a blast. Highly recommended for those wishing to camp with a homebuilt.
My only two critiques are that, since I started going, it’s sad to see that the original “Fly-In” emphasis of the “Show” is slowly diminishing. But heck, it’s still an awesome gathering of aircraft. The second issue I have is that the show used to span two weekends or, at one point, it had the weekend in the middle of the show days. As it is today, Sunday being the last day, most people are leaving Saturday and Sunday is truly deserted. That’s a problem for people like me that can’t take too much vacation and have to take advantage of the weekend to be there. Granted that it would still require me to leave Sunday afternoon but when it had a strong weekend, you could fly in Friday and Saturday was packed!!
Anyway, this may not be an issue for most people since it does seem to be the trend this days (just noticed that Airventure is the same).
Regardless, it’s still a great show and i hope that the organizers keep it going for many years to come.
Chris