Burning Man is probably one of the craziest summer festivals. Since your organization does not provide any services, your attendees must bring everything they need with them. If they need something once they get there, attendees will have to barter with other attendees, as no profitable trading or use of money is allowed.

But given that the majority of attendees are Silicon Valley millionaire entrepreneurs, wealthy heirs or prominent artists, it’s safe to assume they won’t be hitchhiking and carrying tents. The festival, which is closing its doors today, has built its own temporary airport and hired air traffic controllers to handle the heavy traffic created by private jets from wealthy attendees.

The madness of Burning Man. Burning Man is one of the strangest and most paradoxical festivals in the world. For several days a year, thousands of people gather in the middle of the dusty wasteland of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada (USA), where the entire neohippie counterculture is unleashed with musical performances and conceptual art of all kinds.

This year’s event brought together 70,000 people once again, coming very close to the 74,000 people who will be trapped in the mud of Black Rock City in 2023. When the festival is over, everything must be dismantled and left no trace. What happened.

A temporary city, a temporary airport. As if a temporary city wasn’t extraordinary enough, the festival also has its own pop-up airport in the middle of the desert to accommodate the hundreds of millionaires who fly in for the festival. Although it’s known as Black Rock City Municipal Airport, its official ID is 88NV. There is no city or airport.

According to the information received Business ContentBuilt on the dusty bed of a dry lake, the airport has two runways, each 1.82 km long, that can accommodate everything from small planes to small private jets.

Air traffic controllers and volunteersThe airport, like the rest of the organization’s structures, is run by volunteers, including the runway staff and air traffic control area. “The airport is rolled and watered every night by a small fleet of large trucks to stabilize the surface for aircraft and reduce dust on the runway,” a spokesperson for the Burning Man Project told the North American news portal.

According to the organization, “Burning Man hires a team of five professional air traffic controllers, the best in the world.” These controllers are responsible for managing all air traffic at the facility during the festival days, and their expenses are covered by the Burner Express Air service that connects the festival to cities in California and Nevada. The average price of a round-trip ticket between San Francisco and Black Rock City can be around $3,000.

Airport during rush hourA Burning Man spokesperson has claimed in previous editions that the airport handled up to 500 takeoffs and landings per day during its time active.

According to data from the Flight Aware air traffic control page, Black Rock City airport recorded 317 operations on September 1 alone, and 326 on the last day of the festival, shutting down and dismantling its entire “infrastructure” until next year’s edition. It’s still ironic that in the last two days of Burning Man 2024, this non-existent airport recorded more flights than Ciudad Real airport in its entire history.

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Image | Burning Man