I’m running a little late on this one for this year. The one drawback to getting my wife’s help with taking better pictures than I could ever do, is then we need to find time to sort through and save the right ones! But I do have some good ones to share this year from the Air Show on July 16 and 17.
A couple things to mention about the show, it is held at Willow Run Airport every year and proceeds go to support the Yankee Air Museum. They have gotten much better in recent years about having a more “packed” event. Once the flying starts, it really goes non-stop through the end of the show. Food service seemed better organized this year than it has been. That’s all good.
They also stuck with the “drive-in” format. This is more mixed. I love having our vehicle right there with us the whole time. Its so much easier to bring along everything we might need or want during the day. No drama walking back to, and locating your car after. Especially when rain is in the forecast, its just better in almost every way. But I am very unhappy with the price points. The show is broken into two halves, two shows a day of about 2 1/2 hours each, at over $200 for each. The whole day is close to $500 for one carload. As I figure it, you’d need six people to make that a bargain. And some people do! But we didn’t, and even though I had a ton of fun I’m not sure I can justify this every year. Seriously its cheaper for me to drive to Dayton or Battle Creek for their shows. Now the good news is, Yankee Air Museum is a good cause, and the people are easy to work with. One of my tickets was “free” this year because of a short show I went to earlier this year that was completely rained out (tickets say such recompense will not be made, so bonus!). But I can’t really believe its even that profitable for them. The first show in particular (with no Blue Angels, but an F-16 demo instead) had A LOT of empty parking spots. I would guess over half empty. I know last year there were a lot of empty slots, even as the Museum boasted “sold out”; so I would guess they had corporate sponsors picking up the unsold tickets. Not sure if they can count on that every year? I hope they review this process before next year and consider some more affordable options.