The Virginia Festival of Flight always has seemed to be Suffolk’s underperforming annual event. The Virginia Aviation Council brought the festival to the city in 2008, but visitors in recent years can hardly have helped but notice the dwindling attendance.

There were plenty of interesting things to see and a few potentially fun things for families to do, but the admission fee was steep, advertising was insufficient and the payoff seemed too small for most folks to head to the rural side of Suffolk to “look at a few airplanes.”

Folks who attended were likely to be surprised at how much more there was to the Festival of Flight than that, but they had to get there first, and organizers recognized they were having a harder and harder time getting people over that initial hurdle. Last year, the festival was not held, as the aviation council considered its options for rejuvenating what by all rights should be a wildly popular event in Hampton Roads, where the Oceana Naval Air Show creates its own traffic patterns every year.

In the end, it very well may be a student pilot working for peanuts who saved the Festival of Flight.

After having visited large aviation events in other states in the past, Jody Cadwell, who is a student pilot and vice chairman of this year’s Peanut Festival, had a dream to make Virginia’s premier fly-in bigger and better than all the others. His idea: Hitch the aviation festival to Peanut Fest.

There’s a bit of genius in the proposition. A ready-made crowd of tens of thousands of people visiting Peanut Fest on one of its biggest days would bring a welcome infusion of interest into the aviation festival, and the addition of all the aircraft, drones, airplane rides, sales presentations and other interesting content from the Festival of Flight will be a great added attraction for Peanut Fest, which is always looking for ways to freshen up its offerings.

“Everybody’s been wanting something a little bit different at Peanut Fest,” Peanut Fest Executive Director Lisa Key said Tuesday. “Hopefully, the people that come to Peanut Fest can learn something about aviation, and the aviators can come have some fun at Peanut Fest.”

Best of all, visitors to either event will be able to join the fun at the other event at no charge. Those driving in will pay the Peanut Festival parking fee and get access to both events, and those flying in will pay to register their aircraft with the Festival of Flight and also be able to visit Peanut Festival.

Both events are, of course, desperately dependent on good weather, so one must be careful about predictions of success. However, folks with both festivals can be forgiven if they’re looking forward to this October with a special sense of anticipation.