This is the first of a number of articles written on the people and events of the EAA’s AirVenture 2024 held at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One hundred and fifty people registered for the first EAA fly-in event in 1953. 

In 2024, nearly 700,000 people attended and 10,000 aircraft flew in, making the annual event known simply as “Oshkosh” one of the largest air shows in the world.

OSHKOSH, WI, Jul 22 - The Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture, one of the world’s greatest and largest aviation gatherings, ought to start with something really big. 

After all, thousands of aircraft have flown in, and hundreds of thousands of attendees from around the globe have made the pilgrimage to experience everything from aerial demonstrations of the latest military hardware to the simple seat-of-the-pants flying of a tube and fabric ultralight.

For the 2024 edition of AirVenture, the EAA could not have come up with anything better than to celebrate the presence of the great Burt Rutan, an aircraft engineer and designer whose epic influence and accomplishments go right to the heart of the EAA’s roots as homebuilders and tinkerers. 

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of his innovative canard wing design, Rutan was set to speak at least five times at various events during the week, beginning with an evening presentation and discussion held at the Theater In The Woods venue for an overflow audience.

One would imagine Burt Rutan would have much to say. His accomplishments stretch from revolutionizing the homebuilt movement to having five aircraft of his design hanging in the National Air & Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. 

He designed an aircraft that flew non-stop around the globe without refuelling. His Spaceship One won the $10 Million Ansari X Prize by being the first privately funded, non-government spacecraft to fly beyond the Karman Line into official outer space, doing so twice within two weeks. 

He also has distinct views about subjects such as climate change and governmental regulatory interference, which contributed to his retiring to Idaho after a lifetime spent living and working in California.

So, with such a list of epic accomplishments and topics to choose from, which did Mr. Rutan select to enlighten the gathering of true believers who gathered on the opening night of AirVenture to hear the wisdom of an aviation legend?

He spoke of his big brother.

Dick Rutan, former Air Force combat pilot and test pilot, passed away this year in May after suffering from lung cancer and long Covid. He was 85. Burt spoke of their youthful rivalry in which attention for their feats in aviation was the goal, and how Dick’s becoming a successful U.S. Air Force pilot who flew in the Vietnam War seemed to give Dick the upper hand over his engineering brother. 

But when Dick left the Air Force and sought opportunities in test piloting, he ended up working for his little brother in the Mojave Desert.

After seven years as a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base and a two-year stint for designer Jim Bede in Newton, Kansas, Burt returned to Mojave and founded The Rutan Aircraft Factory, which he affectionately referred to during the presentation as the “R-A-F.” 

Through the RAF, Burt Rutan was involved in 49 aircraft that the company designed, developed, and built. It never had more than 5-6 employees, one of them being Dick as their chief test pilot. 

Dick enjoyed flying the Eze, Burt’s most iconic design with its forward, swept wings and pusher engine mounted in the read, to Bakersfield, CA, just 10 feet above the surface of a river that ran partway between the two towns.

Though other accounts attribute competitive reasons for the development of the Voyager aircraft that Burt would design, and Dick would eventually fly non-stop around the world without refuelling.

Burt credited Voyager’s birth to a desire to distract Dick from asking him to build an aerobatic plane, which he didn’t want to do because the accident rates of aerobatic planes were far higher than regular planes. 

Dick and copilot Jeanna Yeager circumnavigated the globe in December of 1986, a nine-day journey that set a flight endurance record. The aircraft flew westbound for 26,366 statute miles.

When Beechcraft engaged Burt and the RAF to design a radical new turboprop twin, Dick was the chief test pilot of what would become the Beechcraft Starship, a twin pusher with a canard that looked very much like the innovative Rutan Eze. 

Burt explained that in his capacity as chief test pilot, Dick trained all other Rutan test pilots, and his legacy includes the training of Mike Melvill, who now has three space flights to his credit, including SpaceShip One’s first-ever civilian space flight in 2004.

When Burt retired in 2011, he wanted to get out of CA.

“Dying in Mojave is redundant,” Burt quipped. “I lived there for 46 years, but worked so hard I never noticed how ugly it was.”

He relocated to a town in Idaho with his entire family, including grandkids and great-grandkids. He wishes he could have done so with Dick, he recounted, but Dick’s wife didn’t want to leave family in California. 

Then his wife’s family moved to Tennessee, and Dick and his spouse were free to leave themselves. For the last three years of Dick’s life, the two brothers were at their closest.

But these were also tough times for the family. Dick was an avid non-smoker who once turned down $1M in funding from a tobacco company, Burt related. So it was with irony that he would suffer from lung cancer. An experimental cure didn’t work. Dick knew the disease was going to kill him. 

Eventually, he was also afflicted by stomach upsets, bedsores, and double pneumonia. After a couple of bad nights, he stated, “I want to call it quits.”

Dick spent his last hours with family and friends around his bed. He talked and laughed.

“I’m really glad I’m in control,” Burt quoted Dick as saying at least three or four times. “I’m going to make the decision, nobody else. And I’m going to make it tonight.”

Dick was thinking more clearly than anyone else, Burt shared. They talked about the old times, and Dick said he was grateful he ultimately moved to Idaho.

They left Dick for his final hours with his wife of 25 years, Kris. She had left Burt and friends to say their goodbyes alone. Now it was their turn to leave the couple alone. As they left her, Burt took one more look back.

”When I turned around and saw my brother for the last time, I wanted to give him a hug. But I knew it would make him laugh, and that might kill him."

So instead, he remembered something he had learned during his years working at Edwards Air Force Base.

“I gave him a proper military salute,” Burt said.

Dick Rutan passed away on May 3, 2024.

Dick had said at one point that his memorial services should be in a hangar surrounded by aeroplanes, and everyone should just wear a t-shirt. Burt made 400 t-shirts and passed them out at the memorial.

We tend the think of our aviation heroes as steely-eyed rocket men, men and women of endless vision and a perspective as broad as the heavens. It was at once poignant and refreshing to be reminded that we are, after all, human. 

After all the globe-shrinking accomplishments, industrial achievements, or wartime derring-do, what really matters is how we touch one another’s lives. We are truly a family, as the aviation community is so often described.

Burt Rutan’s touching and intimate portrayal of his brother Dick to open Oshkosh 2024 set the tone for what could be described as the aviation world’s largest family reunion.