Published July 2001

It's Takeoff Time
'Year-round' planning pays off for Barbara Tolbert and the Arlington EAA Fly-In

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

Barbara Tolbert knows a thing or two about event planning.

As the Executive Director of the Arlington EAA Fly-In, she’s in charge of bringing in exhibitors, allocating land and financial resources, and marketing the event, which draws between 1,200 and 1,600 aircraft and almost 50,000 visitors annually.

“It’s amazing. It’s almost like planning a little city,” Tolbert said.

Building that “little city” includes establishing parking lots, campgrounds and a food court; setting up water, garbage, sewer and electrical services; and putting up booths for vendors to sell their wares during the five-day event at the Arlington Airport.

The physical transformation takes only weeks, thanks to 740 or so volunteers and Tolbert’s three-member staff. But the planning, well, that’s another matter entirely.

“It’s incredibly year-round,” Tolbert said.

After the event, which this year runs from July 11 to July 15, there’s the follow-up: the tear-down, reporting on the financials and debriefing the staff and volunteers.

During the debriefing, “we look at what worked well. We look at what changes we might need to make. We look at where we might be straining under the growth,” Tolbert said. “So, we find what our focus might be for the next year, and then we pick off three to five things we think we can easily fix, or maybe some of them aren’t so easily fixed.”

Then, in September, it’s time to get the next fly-in under way.

There are vendors to entice — 135 exhibitors will attend this year’s event — advertisements to submit and land-use planning to do.

And, believing that “the best ideas are stolen,” Tolbert makes a point of attending several fly-ins across the country to see how they run things.

Every year, she visits AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis., the largest recreation aviation event in the country, and Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Fla., the second largest.

The Arlington EAA Fly-In, the third-largest event of its kind in the nation, has “become the West representative of this event, so we’re kind of excited at what that means for the future, you know, the potential to grow,” Tolbert said.

Such potential was evident to Tolbert even before she became executive director seven years ago. Back then, she was an independent sales representative for 27 different manufacturers in Washington state and had been a volunteer for the fly-in in a marketing capacity.

“One of the things I recognized was that they (the Northwest EAA Fly-In board) needed to remodify their marketing plan. They needed to go after a more national audience,” she said.

Nowadays, the Arlington EAA Fly-In advertises in national aviation publications and sends out brochures to people in 18 states — with results. Last year, the event had pilots from 38 states and five foreign countries attending.

Focusing advertising at the national level helps “weather proof” the event, Tolbert said.

While rainy conditions might make locals hesitate to venture out, “somebody planning a vacation from five or eight states away is coming regardless of the weather, so that’s helped us stabilize the event. And really, the last seven years have been a tremendous growth cycle for the fly-in,” Tolbert said, adding that the event now operates on a $390,000 budget.

Part of that growth is due to the strong support the fly-in has received from the city of Arlington, the Arlington Airport and the community, Tolbert said.

“What we try to do is involve the community in the event in positive ways as much as possible,” she said. “For instance, the Smokey Point (Area) Chamber sells the tickets at our ticket booth — the Arlington Chamber has done it in the past — as a fund-raiser to help support the chamber.

“But the idea behind it was, ... we decided that we needed to help people who had been here for a long time discover what was happening ... at the airport for that week, because it’s truly fascinating. And if they were going to be able to understand that market and how to take advantage of it for their businesses, we had to get them here.”

And understanding that market can be a boon for area businesses, as Tolbert estimates about $3 million is pumped into the local economy by those attending the fly-in each year.

“If it’s not one of the biggest, it is one of the premier events that happen in the county,” said Sandy Ward, Executive Director of the Snohomish County Tourism Bureau. “It brings in a lot of people and a lot of (hotel) room nights.”

Tolbert, who works closely with Ward as Chairwoman of the Tourism Bureau’s Board of Directors, said events such as the fly-in can be a valuable economic development tool.

“I think that the benefits to any area where you can bring tourists in, have something for them to do, so that it’s organized for them, you’ve planned the infrastructure for them, the money they leave behind is fabulous,” she said. “It builds our roads and funds our schools, puts up bridges, pays for sewers.”

But the fly-in does more than bring tourists and their dollars to the area — it also has a mission to provide aviation education and awareness, and does so through educational seminars and forums, Tolbert said.

“What we’re doing is actually teaching people to be better pilots,” she said.

Believing in that mission helps her handle those times when accidents — sometimes fatal — occur during or following the fly-in. Last year, three men from Spokane died when their Cessna 180 crashed as they were heading home from the fly-in.

“You want to make sure that there’s an amount of sensitivity that goes to the families of the victims of the accident,” Tolbert said. “The one thing that weighs on me the most is how it impacts our volunteers and how does it impact the guests for our event.

“Accidents happen, and they happen on the freeways; they can happen in all kinds of business, and it’s terribly unfortunate. What you want to make sure (is) from it ... something was learned and that there was something there to care for the people ... through the event.”

Such accidents are reviewed “to examine what happened, if there was anything we could do, how we reacted afterward or even (how we could) eliminate it from the beginning,” Tolbert said.

From now until the fly-in gates open at 8 a.m. July 11, Tolbert and her staff — brother Jim Scott, who is the fly-in manager; mother Betty Scott, who is the office assistant; and Brian Greene, who helps with facility planning — will be working 16-hour days. Vendors will be shipping in freight, and hundreds of volunteers will arrive to help set up the “little city.”

When the gates do open, Tolbert will be in constant motion, cruising across the 96 acres of land the fly-in leases from the airport, busy greeting the VIPs and making sure the volunteers have what they need and that the “guests are getting a very positive experience.”

And for those five days, she’ll stay on-site, camping out in a motor home. Then, when it’s all over, it’ll be time to start again.

For more information on the Arlington EAA Fly-In, visit the event Web site, www.nweaa.org.

Related: Aviation event is fun for the whole family

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