Well today’s entry will be very short as I am exhausted tonight, hopefully my writing won’t be a bunch of typos and goobely gook.
Today we spent time at the Colorado Springs Air Show at the “Old Airport”. I am not much on attending Air shows, attending many during my “short” stint in the Air Force, but we thought attending one that I didn’t have to “work” at would be a nice change of pace. Throw in the fact that my dad came up to see the show (he and my son are both “airplane geeks”) and we got free tickets it was even nicer.
I personally thought the show was a bit of a disappointment. Static displays were slim and the aerial part was fairly small. Throw in the fact that the scheduled “headliners”, the Canadian Snow Birds, didn’t show the whole thing was a bit of a downer (especially, after the event organizers charged us an additional $2.00 for parking just because the Snow birds were supposed to be here).
I still had a decent time. The weather turned out to be nicer than expected, and I was with my family, but I probably won’t be going back next year… well, unless I get free tickets again.
I forgot the camera at home so no pictures tonight. My dad and step mom both had camera’s so maybe well get a few pictures soon.
By the way how was the Bronco game today? I mean I know they won, but we didn’t get to watch any of the game today due to the Air Show.
An e-mail to the Canadian Snow Birds:
I traveled nearly 100 miles yesterday to the Colorado Springs, Co air show yesterday as they claimed that the Snowbirds were going to perform there. http://www.cosairshow.com/events.htm
Then at the last minute, the announcer claimed that the Snowbirds had to cancel because of weather between El Paso and Colorado Springs. Another time, he claimed that it was because of weather in El Paso.
Looking at your web site, it appears that you were scheduled to perform in El Paso yesterday with the show ending sometime between 3:00 to 4:00 PM.
Was the Colorado Springs show using your name legitimately? And if so, how did you expect to perform at 2 air shows on the same day in 2 different cities nearly 900 miles apart.
If you honestly thought it possible to do 2 shows in one day, how is it that weather could interfere with a military team flying jet power aircraft?
What were you going to do for ground support?
How were you going to travel from El Paso to Colorado Springs when the show ended there at 3:00 PM for a show 900 miles away that ended at 4:00 PM.
I have helped put air shows together in the past and been a member of ICAS and was even part of presenting the Snowbirds at the Billings MT air show a number of years ago and from what I know about jet teams, they don’t just zoom into a city, present a show without at least one rehearsal run for bearings, and move onto the next city.
None of this makes sense. It sure would be nice to know what honestly happened yesterday.
It will be interesting to see if the Snow Birds actually respond. This is really looking like a case of “bait and switch”
I heard the local rumor that the Snow Birds were not coming the day before. As the person I heard the rumor from said, “It’s impossible to be in two places at one time”. However, when the Airshow promoters used the Snow Bird appearance to charge me 66% more to park than advertised on the Air Show website and the paper, I thought what I heard was just a rumor.
In my opinion the Snow Bird advertisement wasn’t the only stretch on the truth. If you look at the schedule it listed that the newest aircraft to the AF inventory, the F-22, was to appear at the show. Now although we did see the F-22 it was only taking off from COS to head to the Bronco game, turns out if you do a little research the F-22 was here for a fly over at the AF- Navy game on Saturday, and then head for a fly over for the Bronco game on Sunday. So although it took off from an airport that just happened to be having an airshow, it does not appear that this aircraft was here for the show as advertised. Maybe next you the show promoters should advertise all the passenger flight coming into the airport as part of their show as well.
Any response to your E-Mail?
It’s been 8 months since that last failed to show airshow…
I found the CO Springs Airshow web site still isn’t updated for this year’s event in Sept.
One source has deleted the performers mentioned,including SBs,after I asked a fellow(IPMS Centennial member) modeler for info in CO Springs on them coming this year,not that thier connected,www.iflyamerica.com
But I did find the Tucumcari,NM web has them for Oct!!?
I’m planning on attending the RMtn Metro AP show in Aug in Broomfield,for Sports Aviation.
If I get some debt out of the way by Oct and SAVE $$ maybe NM with a friend or two?
Terry