Fond du Lac County Airport plays big part in AirVenture planning

While Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh gets all the attention during AirVenture as the busiest airport in the world during the airshow, The Fond du Lac County Airport is the next closest airport to Oshkosh and plays a big part during the week of and days surrounding AirVenture.

Fond du Lac County Airport Manager Bryan Linger says there is a lot of coordinating with other groups to make it all work.

The airport also serves as an emergency place to send planes that may be in the air when and if an issue happens at the Oshkosh airport like a crash. When an incident happens at the Oshkosh airport, it may automatically close for safety reasons, so any planes that were looking to land at Wittman would be diverted to Fond du Lac to land and wait out the issue taking place in Oshkosh.

Linger also says many pilots like to avoid the congestion of flying into the worlds busiest airport so they choose a less stressful option of flying into Fond du Lac. The airport then arranges a shuttle to bring pilots to and from AirVenture.

The airport has a temporary tower that is manned by air traffic controllers that alternate between Fond du Lac and the main tower at Wittman Regional in Oshkosh.

While year to year, things overall stay the same for planning in Fond du Lac, there are always issues that need to be dealt with. This year had a heavy rain just before the majority of planes came in, leading to some complications with some of the heavier planes that wanted to park here. To accommodate them, one of the main runways was closed so the planes could park on pavement eliminating the worry of sinking into the soft ground.