Hello all, first post here. I am looking to have a camping fly-in at my families public airport. Is there anything I need to know about liability? Do I need event insurance. Would just be a fly in with a campfire/cookout at night and breakfast in the morning. Also I know most of you are out west but who all would be interested in camping at a nice turf field in PA? Would be held at 08N.

I assume since your family has a public airport that they already have liability insurance. Contact the insurance agent and verify it covers a fly-in.

A quick look at AirNav says that the airport is not public. It's a private airport and open to the public, in other words it's private but you don't need permission to land compared to mine for example that's also private but PPR (Prior Permission Required) to land. Every state is also different as where on Texas I can use my land for recreational things (with some specifications) and anyone who uses it can not sue me if they get hurt on it, barring any gross negligence on my part. That's one reason how we can have so many ATV parks and hunting lands here in Texas.

As mentioned previously, just ask your insurance agent (I'd do it by email. This way you get his reply in writing) because currently you might be covered for anyone landing and departing but if someone were to get hurt while camping overnight or got burnt by the BBQ, would you be covered?

Thanks guys, good thinking about emailing them. What airnav means is that it is a public airport but owned privately (not owned by the state or county).

That got me interested in your airport. Based on the information in the FAA database when you fill out the FAA Form 7480-1 "FAA Notice for Construction, Alteration and Deactivation of Airports" you have in #10 "Current Use" and the options are : Private, Public, or Private use of Public Lands. I gather your parents checked Public ( I checked Private). Then under #11 "Ownership" the options are : Private, Public, Military. I would think they checked Private ( So did I). So my best guess based on the database is that you have a private airport with public use, like where I have my airplane right now 3F9 in Texas, but it wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong, lol.

If not you might want to check and correct the database. I had to correct it for mine and it still has some mistakes. It could also just be a technical term thing and we're both talking about the same thing just using different terms.

hmm, I'll have to do some looking into that. Thanks for the info!

If you're an EAA member, contact them. A guy I know with his own field has a fly-in every year and gets a weekend policy through EAA. He said it's cheap.

Good deal. ATVMX if you get a quote from EAA please let us know so we can see what's cheap, and compared to what. After watching TV last night I just saw that if my garage were in California it would be worth about $1million, if I add a fancy toilet. Can't believe the prices they say on some of those shows, lol.

The pilots association at my airport used to put on a fly-in every year. At some point, the Port agency which owns the airport decided to require event-specific insurance. EAA national HQ used to provide free event insurance for their chapter's events, so all of a sudden our EAA chapter became the fly-in host. (didn't matter, pretty much all the same members either way)Somewhere along the line, probably due to a fatal crash a number of years ago at the Arlington fly-in, after which the dead pilot's estate / family sued the fly-in, the EAA mothership decided no more free event insurance for chapters. When we went out to get our own, it ended up costing about a grand for the 2-day event. That's a lot of dough.... and a big part of the reason why we don't put on a fly-in any more.