Thank you to the more than 250 of you that came out to Founders’ Plaza at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport for Cranky Dorkfest DFW on Sunday. The event was an enormous success. We had a ton of incredible raffle prizes, and we were able to raise $1,640 for Challenge Air for Kids & Friends in the process. I’m going to get into more detail below, but first, I’m happy to announce that the date for Cranky Dorkfest LAX has been set. It will be from 11a to 1p PT on Saturday, September 7. This will again be the same weekend as NYCAviation’s SpotLAX2019 and it’s just two days before the start of the APEX Expo in LA. So mark your calendars!
But let’s get back to Cranky Dorkfest DFW, because it was a great event. We picked the right day since Saturday had gusty winds with the wrong runways in use for proper spotting. On Sunday, the winds calmed down just in time for a brilliant 60 degree afternoon. There’s certainly less aircraft variety than in LA, but the plethora of silver MD-80s made up for any lack of diversity. (Plus, we did see the Qantas A380, Qatar oneworld aircraft, Avianca Embraer 190, and a few other goodies.)
People showed up early, and in fact, the photo above was before the event even officially started. (It was also still breezy at that point, as you can tell from my hair.) That table above was meant to showcase all the raffle prizes. We had things ranging from some impressively large models from United to 2 seats on the last revenue MD-80 flight on American. Spirit also gave away two pairs of free tickets, and DFW has two sets of VIP airfields tours. I want to be sure to thank all the companies that donated to the raffle (in alphabetical order).
- American Airlines
- Bell Helicopter
- Boeing
- Bombardier
- Braniff Airways Foundation
- British Airways
- Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
- Korry Franke
- Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation
- Spirit Airlines
- The Air Current
- United Airlines
I need to give special thanks to two organizations. First, American Airlines was kind enough to sponsor the two food trucks at the event. I believe everyone who came received free lunch thanks to American. (Sorry about the long lines, but there were a ton of you there.)
And lastly, I have to thank Casey and the whole team at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. They put this thing together and made life easy for me and for all the attendees. They put together signage, found overflow parking, had officers directing people, brought heaters and tables, and collected all of the raffle prizes. Oh, and most important of all, they brought me a bullhorn. I had way too much fun with that.
This event was different than the casual, unorganized September affair we have in LA, but it was one that I thought went well enough to replicate. If anyone at a major airport around the US is interested in putting something like this together, just reach out to me at cf@crankyflier.com. I don’t want to do these more than a couple times a year at most, but I would like to try to bring this to more cities in the future, especially those with large groups of airline/aviation employees like the Metroplex.
Thank you again to everyone for coming out on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll see you in LA on September 7.
