Oshkosh Day 3 – Showing the Peach
Posted on Jul 28, 2010 by R. Steven Justice |
“It’s nice to see the Georgia peach at Oshkosh!”
That was the comment of one Georgian as he visited our exhibit at EAA Airventure this week. The joint MGC/COIA exhibit has become a small part of home for the thousands of Georgian’s visiting Oshkosh to be part of this annual aviation event. We’ve had people like Clark and Sue Schadle from Fayetteville, Jerry Cadle from Swainsboro, Sherrell Gay from Augusta, Steve Champness of the Atlanta Aero Club, and others from throughout our state come by to visit our exhibit during the first three days of Airventure. They are universally supportive of our efforts promoting Georgia’s aerospace industry to the world to bring more jobs and economic activity to our state.
However even our Georgia visitors are surprised when they hear the good news about Georgia aerospace. They know aerospace is important to Georgia, but they never guessed that we have over 84,000 jobs in over 500 companies with $5.2 billion in annual payroll and the over $3.4 billion in aerospace exports. They are even more surprised, and happy, to hear that Georgia aerospace export have grown 55% and aerospace jobs have grown over 4.5% over the last four years and are projected to grow even more in the next 18 months!
Spreading this “good news” about Georgia aerospace is a major mission of our exhibit in Oshkosh this week. With over 500,000 visitors and 700 companies exhibiting during the week long event, we have a great opportunity to educate the aerospace community about aerospace in Georgia and why they should consider Georgia for new business ventures. We have several Georgia aerospace companies here including Maule Aircraft, Aircraft Spruce & Specialty, Eastman Aviation, MS760 and ALFRed Technologies as examples of the diverse aerospace industry in Georgia. Having MGC here with us is a great asset to show prospective companies that Georgia has a strong aviation/aerospace education infrastructure that can serve the need of growing aerospace companies. Together we are letting the aerospace community know that Georgia is a great place for aerospace.
We agree with our Georgia visitor; it is very nice to see the Georgia peach at Oshkosh!
Please wait…