No Crossville Memorial Airport Fly-in for 2020

Crossville Memorial Airport’s annual fly-in is the latest Cumberland County event to be canceled due to the COVID-19 health crisis.

“The wise thing we felt to do was back off,” said City Manager Greg Wood of airport committee members, who made the decision Monday.

“Since the last meeting, our cases in the county have more than doubled and almost doubled in the state,” he told Crossville City Council during its monthly work session Aug. 4. “One of the big attractions is being able to take an airplane ride for 25 bucks on the FBO’s aircraft, and they didn’t feel the they could absorb that liability.”

The highly contagious coronavirus that’s prompted a global pandemic has claimed six lives in Cumberland County and 1,144 statewide as of Wednesday afternoon’s report from the Tennessee Department of Health. Tennessee is among 21 states flagged as “red zones,” meaning more than 100 new cases per 100,000 in population.

The event was originally scheduled for Sept. 26. Wood said the committee hopes to reschedule the fly-in and open house in the spring, should the virus numbers decrease.

Waivers signed by those who took airplane rides during the 2019 fly-in indicated a number of people attended from outside the county and even as far away as Ohio and Florida. The airport committee feared similar attendance this year would heavily increase chances of spreading the virus and make social distancing and screening difficult on the event that relies heavily on volunteer help.

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©2020 the Crossville Chronicle (Crossville, Tenn.)

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