FYI – This email was recently sent out by the SAAA following the cancellation of Ausfly 2014

Dear Members

The Ausfly event is financially underwritten by the Sport Aircraft Association of Australia, but we could not manage to put on the event without the generous support of a number of other associations & businesses. Airshow events don’t just happen – they require considerable funds and considerable amounts of time by our unpaid volunteers to put on a show for one weekend a year.

Most of our volunteers give more time to SAAA projects than they can afford – especially those that are still working full-time. They willingly sacrifice family time & business time to give something back to aviation – just because they love aircraft and the sound of lovely engines roaring around the skies. Aviation is in their blood & in their soul. Unfortunately, this year we have had a lot on our plate at the SAAA offices; we have had a recent turn-over of our management team, having burnt out our volunteers almost to the point of breaking them.
The SAAA team recently held a meeting in Brisbane, where it became apparent that we were in grave danger of not being able to do all of our SAAA work and run Ausfly at the same time – something had to give. With losing some of our key event-management players, to try and do everything we had planned meant that we were highly likely to fail badly at some of them. Ausfly 2014 would have become a failure in the public arena, which would not be good for any of the people involved or associated with the event. Therefore, after considerable discussion & attempts to kid ourselves that it would all be OK and that the show must go on, the team made the very difficult decision to cancel this year’s event.

As a result of the cancellation of Ausfly, the SAAA will be holding a fly-in over the weekend September 13-14 which will allow for the SAAA AGM to be held at 2pm on Saturday 13th this will be followed by a BBQ and trivia night to be held Saturday evening. The SAAA would like to encourage all members to attend the AGM and National Council will be available to answer all member questions.

The SAAA MPC course will running 11-12 September. Any enquiries regarding the MPC, please contact the office.

Yours sincerely
Phil Hale
Hon. National Secretary
For and on behalf of Sport Aircraft Association of Australia National Council