I haven’t seen “official” numbers, but they announced late week that they’d set a record for numbers of airplanes here, and I don’t doubt that at all.
Vendors, on the other hand, are waaaay down in numbers. There’s huge open spaces in the big barns. A big chunk of one of the barns has been taken over by federal programs, that used to be in a separate pavilion. Lots of non aviation related vendors in every building too. Used to be half again as many vendors or more in those buildings, and all were required to be aviation connected.
There seems to be as many or maybe a few more vendors set up outside, but still not like in past.
One vendor I spoke with paid over $90 K for one of the fairly large outdoor exhibit spaces….I talked to one of the food vendors, they said EAA takes 25% of their gross.
Was planning on leaving this morning, got all packed up, and field went IMC in smoke and low ceiling.
MTV