Fresh Air: The inside story of the Gold Coast Pacific Airshow

How Kevin Elliott fought back from COVID oblivion to revolutionise airshows in Australia 

Here’s some statistics that won’t be surprising. According to the latest analysis, COVID-19 cost the global aviation industry $353 billion in 2020 alone. And that’s not including the hundreds of aircraft sentenced to death in desert boneyards, hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, and millions of travel plans cancelled. In fact, probably the only sector that had it tougher was the events industry. It’s hard to get a precise figure, but number crunchers now estimate the business events industry alone lost $1.9 trillion due to the pandemic – more than the annual GDP of Australia.