Saturday was another successful Cranky Dorkfest, our biggest yet. Thank you to everyone who came out to LAX, and for those of you that didn’t… well I’m going to make you jealous.
The day started out on the ramp outside the Flight Path Museum on the south side of LAX. LAWA really stepped it up this year with a bigger ramp visit that had some surprises. This is becoming a morning staple on Saturday, and I hope to continue the partnership with LAWA in years to come.
The gates opened a little after 9am, and over 300 people streamed in.
Unlike previous years, the Flight Path wasn’t open until after the event, but that was ok. LAX had a bunch of swag available, and it had brought out bathrooms and a water truck as well.
Greeting us as we entered was, for the first time, a static display of aircraft. DHL brought in a 767-300 while Delta had an A321neo.
We were able to go crawl around on both airplanes. It’s a lot of fun to see the empty insides of a cargo aircraft, but also, I had never seen the new Delta First Class, so this was a nice surprise.
Delta Captain Geist was sent out to greet everyone, and he brought treats. He was handing out some of Delta’s famed aircraft trading cards to everyone who entered the airplane.
LAWA CEO John Ackerman was there to welcome everyone, and he gave out some pretty cool LAX backpacks filled with goodies to three lucky people. John is on my right in the photo below. To his right is LAWA COO Doug Webster and all the way on my left is Nicole Carcel from Community Relations who put this whole thing together.
Of course, the real action was on the flight line, where people grabbed spots as close as possible to the runways to get some good views, like this 747 that was taxiing out.
Just before 11, it was time to relocate to the park across from In-N-Out for the main event. The marine layer cleared out and made for a really nice afternoon.
Since nobody has to RSVP for the main event, the best we can do to estimate numbers is to count the number of raffle tickets that get handed out. This year, it was a surprising 527 handed out by Flightradar24’s Ian Petchenik and my son. Yeah, it was a big crowd. And I can’t thank Ian and my son enough for doing the hard work.
Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures of the main event, because I’m always too busy talking to people and handing out goodies. If you look on social media, I know you’ll find plenty of better photos, like these.
This year’s raffle was huge. Thank you to all of the donors for some really special items:
- Flightradar24, JetTip, and The Air Current for complimentary subscriptions
- Sun Country for a vintage hat and deck of cards
- Breeze and Hawaiian for giving away points/miles
- Alaska, Avelo, JetBlue, and Spirit for roundtrip tickets
- Alaska, Delta, Fedex, JetBlue, Porter, Southwest, Spirit, and United for models (Southwest gave away a MAX in the Colleen retro Canyon Blue livery)
- American for gift packs including a backpack with goodies from the airline’s special D-Day charter
- Alaska for a personalized luggage tag cut from a Convair 240’s skin
And while we’re at it, thanks to Asiana and Korean for their twin A380s departures going on time:
And thanks to Lufthansa for closing the event with the showstopping 747-8.
It was a great day. As I like to say, I’m just a great excuse for people to be able to get together do what they love. Cranky Dorkfest has become an easy way for friends who share this hobby to meet up, watch airplanes, eat burgers, and make new friends.
But it’s not just Cranky Dorkfest that makes this possible. NYC Aviation had its hugely successful SpotLAX events all weekend long, making for an action-packed weekend that could make any avgeek happy.
We haven’t set a date for next year’s event yet, but just keep watching here. Once again, thank you to everyone who made this come together this year, and thanks to all of you who attended.
