After a first decade of advancements and network reinforcement, from the beginning of the 1970s, EUROAVIA started lacking sponsorships. Companies were not considering investing in EUROAVIA profitable enough, which led to problems in financing the activities of the association. Moreover, the members started losing interest and they were not identifying anymore with the highest principles of the association. Under these circumstances, a period of low activity and engagement commenced, which we can refer to as the “dark years” of EUROAVIA.
In April 1971, in the 13th issue of the EUROAVIA NEWS, we can read the provocative Editorial Comment titled “Euroavia useful?”, which criticised companies that were not acknowledging the strategic advance of EUROAVIA in bridging the gap between students and industries.
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To face the lack of sponsors, the Central Committee developed a promotional plan focused on the “study report”, a collaborative work of the Local Groups illustrating the academic and career prospectives of aerospace students all around Europe. Such a study would be provided to the industry as a means of cooperation. However, this was not enough to solve the association’s problems. In the student report itself, many Local Groups reported a severe decrease in participation and interest of their members in EUROAVIA’s activities. Moreover, first problems of generational change started appearing, caused by alumni leaving the association and knowledge being lost between board changes.
This inadequacy of EUROAVIA to maintain its organisation and meeting expectations reached its peak when it was not possible to find a host for the congress for two consecutive years, 1972 and 1973. In this period, in the EUROAVIA NEWS journal, the only effective mean of communication of the time, no mention is made of international activities nor any statements from the Central Committee can be found.
The economic situation was extremely critical, leading to emergency funds being requested to the Local Groups, many of which were inactive or difficult to contact. Due to the problems in communication, it is in these years that the idea of compiling a list of points of contact from each Local Group was born. Communication and financial problems continued for many years, with the few funds remaining being first inaccessible from the bank and eventually completely lost.
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Naturally, in this situation, also one of the most successful EUROAVIA project, the NEWS started to face problems, due to a lack of content and funding, and, in 1975, the task of editing the journal was moved from London to Stockholm.
During the congress 1975 in London, UK, there was a proposal to reshape EUROAVIA into a federation, highlighting the rising individualistic character within the association. After this event, no official documents can be found. It is therefore difficult to assess what exactly happened in the following years. It is possible that activities only continued as a local level.
From the ashes of a long-dreamed European cooperation that seemed to be lost, some EUROAVIA Spirit must have however survived within some individuals, which would lead to the association’s revival, which would only happen a decade later.