814, I ran the air show side of a small display at Coningsby about 25 years ago. The costs were modest and with creative accounting we netted around £100k or around £3 per person.
A few years later, before Finningley closed, charitable giving was another tick box on the route to Air Cdre (cynic?) and the staish at Waddington wanted his share of the air show pot but he wanted a 'small' at home. We pointed out that 'small' could not guarantee to cover the fixed costs - toilets, traffic management, police, signage, posters, programmes, barrier hire, marquees, seating. insurance, etc etc. Litter clearance and the Sunday FOD Plod were all done in-house for 'free' just another weekend stolen. The only way to cover the fixed charges was larger scale. It worked - just.
The following year we had to cancel, although we had not laid out too much money, as GW1 intervened.
Subsequently Waddo went professional. The full-time amateur airshow organiser from Finningley, a mis-employed Nav Instructor from the ANS, retired and became the full time professional organiser at a salary of around £30k, he had a business manager, a retired ex-nav off the E3, at a similar fee and of course a couple of administrators. No longer were toilets and litter clearance, and possibly even barrier erection, done in-house, but done commercially and paid for from the revenue.
The MOD supports only a couple of large shows now - Waddington and Leuchars as far as I know - with other shows theoretically paying participants T&S and other costs such as smoke for the display teams.
All air shows are expensive and the standing charges so high that they have to do everything possible to maximise revenue.
my offspring demand to be taken to events which I myself would choose to forego
One airshow I remember was Coltishall around 1969. The weather was delta sierra with base at around 1,000 feet, moderate rain and dense black clouds. There appeared to be no more than a couple of thousand people on the display line as we did a horizontal display in the Lanc. Given the waether we gave them the best we could for their money but it was a traditional airshow and not your modern show biz extravanganza.
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