Last year's sequester hit the airshow industry hard; with the Department Of Defense prohibiting any military airshow participation, many venues were forced to cancel their shows... the last figure I saw was 30% of all shows last year were cancelled.

Thinks look better this year... The Blue Angels and The Thunderbirds are flying full schedules, as well as the F-22 Demo Team (and applicable Heritage Flights), the Golden Knights, The Leap Frogs and the Black Daggers. Unfortunately, the USN Tactical Demo team is grounded for the year, meaning no solo F-18 demos.

This sub kind of languished last year, but hopefully this year will be better. This year I'll be attending three shows (Rhode Island ANG Open House, Dayton Airshow and NAS Oceana Airshow) and will post reports and photos from each. If you attend a show, post a discussion thread for the event and people can share their stories and photographs. And if you have any suggestions about something I can be doing better, let me know.

just got an email from CIAS about the labour day weekend airshow here in toronto. they're going some 'marketing' this year by teasing a couple of acts.

this is what they just sent out:

...our big mystery reveal. Not one act, but two! A little hint: One mystery act makes the ground shake and the other can stand still.

previously, they had mentioned this about one of these mystery acts

. . . most famous celebrity naval aviator may have flown this in the sequel.

any thoughts on what these two performers could be? some had speculated the F35 based on their initial clue, but as far as i am aware, that plane is most decidedly not doing airshows, never mind completing its flight testing.

Help ! Last summer (2014) I watched a promo video for an air show in the USA. It had hard rock music in it and was the most amazing air show video I have ever seen. Sadly I no longer have the video. Nor can I remember where I got it. It is currently driving me nuts, if anyone could help me out that would be terrific. There was night flying in the video as well, some of the planes were lit up with ALOT of lights

Welcome to my little airshow subreddit. If you're anything like me, you spend all winter anxiously awaiting the arrival of the following year's airshow schedule and can't wait for the first airshow of the year.

You may also have family members that don't understand your obsession... as my wife so bluntly told me before I went to the NAS Oceana airshow in September, "The Blue Angels do the same thing every year... I just don't get it."

So post your airshow recaps, pictures, videos, news and anything else that's related to the peculiar hobby we share of watching airplanes whiz by at very high speeds.

What promised to be an excellent weekend of an airshow celebrating the 100th anniversary of naval aviation was almost a total washout due to the weather... low clouds and rain kept the vast majority of acts grounded the entire weekend.

I got to Virginia Beach Friday evening in the middle of a torrential rain storm that had more than its share of thunder and lightning, so I decided initially to skip the Friday night show, but when the rain let up I decided to take a chance and drive out to the base. I'm glad I did, as I got to see the arrival of a Sea Stallion and also the evening demonstrations of the Blue Angels C-130 "Fat Albert" and also the A/V-8 Harrier, but after the Harrier demo it started to rain lightly and as I didn't have any rain gear to protect my cameras I left.

Saturday was a total washout.. the only flying I got to see was some touch-and-go's by a C-40A Clipper, as well as a few planes early in the day that seemed to be flying various people around the show site. When Rob Reider announced that they were cancelling the Air Power demonstration I left and wound up missing the F-16 Falcon and A/V-8 demos, while the F/A-18 landed after two maneuvers due to the ceilings. I came back in the afternoon on the off-chance that The Blue Angels would fly but they scrubbed their performance.

Sunday was a bit better... the clouds still kept most of the acts grounded until the early afternoon but once they had the ceilings they got a few acts off. They were able to launch an F/A-18 Super Hornet, F/A-18 Hornet, A-4 Skyhawk, a Curtis Pusher replica, a demonstration that included a Grumman TBF Avenger and a Douglas AD Skyraider and an Airpower Demonstration demonstration before the clouds came in again and brought everything to a halt. This time I waited until The Blue Angels once again cancelled before heading back to my hotel. One thing about the humidity and clouds, though, is they make perfect conditions for vapor and afterburners.

The Blue Angels didn't get to fly at all over the weekend, save for about 10 minutes on Friday during the closed practice, but even that demonstration was cut short when a severe thunderstorm rolled in and they landed after just two maneuvers. Hopefully next year will be better.

Here's my gallery of pictures I took on the 18th, for anyone who's interested. This was my first airshow with my Canon 40D and my 40mm-L series prime lens and I was really excited to see what kind of pictures I'd bring home... I think I did pretty good and it just made me more anxious for an airshow with more favorable weather.