Jets roared and hearts soared last weekend as tens of thousands of fans came out to the Villeneuve Airport for the region’s first airshow in two years.
Some 35,000 people watched the skies over Villeneuve Airport Aug. 21-22 for the fifth annual Alberta International Airshow.
Formerly the Edmonton Airshow, the airshow was originally supposed to happen in 2019, but was called off due to wet fields. It was delayed again in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All those delays made for a lot of pent-up demand and a massive traffic jam on Aug. 21. Cars were backed up along Villeneuve Road for kilometres as guests waited up to three hours to get in the gate. Some had to watch the first two hours of the show from the highway; others got out and walked to the airport instead.
Organizers planned for 15,000 people a day and had about 14,000 in advance tickets sold as of Friday night, said airshow organizer Richard Skermer. At least 25,000 showed up on Saturday — a combination of Sunday guests coming early due to predictions of Sunday rain and a huge number of walk-ins — and they all tried to get in at about 10 a.m. Gate managers started to turn guests away at about 1 p.m. because the fields were packed.
“It’s a good problem to have. A lot of people wanted to see the planes. The problem was it overwhelmed everything,” Skermer said.
Skermer added he would likely restrict next year’s show to advance ticket sales only to prevent these problems from happening again.
Awesome stunts
Skermer said guests and performers at the show were otherwise enthusiastic about the event.
Edmontonian Gillian Peterson was one of the many guests who bought tickets for the 2019 show and held onto it for this one. She said she jumped up and down in excitement when she heard the show was finally cleared for takeoff.
“I’ve been waiting two years for this airshow,” she said, adding that she kept her ticket pinned to a clipboard this whole time.
Peterson said this was the first mass gathering she had attended since the start of the pandemic, and that it was a little strange to see people’s mask-less faces again.
Norma Carifelle of Edmonton said she was glad her 82-year-old father and cancer survivor Sam Carifelle lived long enough to see this show.
“He’s been treated like royalty here and the show is better than ever.”
The show featured a vast array of planes and stunts, some never seen before at Villeneuve. St. Albert’s Bill Carter performed his classic upside-down ribbon cut in his blue Pitts Special, while Kyle Fowler zoomed his Y-shaped Long-EZ stunt plane underneath Billy Kohut as Kohut backflipped a motorcycle over the runway. Crowds cheered as Capt. Daniel Deluce rattled their eardrums with the roar of his CF-18’s afterburners and marveled as the gigantic B-1B “Bone” bomber and E-3 Sentry AWACS soared overhead.
Crowds gasped as members of the British Army’s Red Devils display team leaped from their C-130 Hercules, trailing smoke and a 5,000 square-foot Union Jack flag as they parachuted into the airshow.
It was the team’s first jump at a Canadian airshow in 25 years and its first in Alberta, said Sgt. Dean Walton, speaking Thursday before the airshow.
"We're super happy to be here and excited to perform for the Alberta crowd,” he said.
Skermer said the airshow also drew many investors and politicians to the airport. Next year’s show would have even more wheeling-and-dealing with a full-on trade show and career fair.
Skermer thanked Sturgeon County and the provincial government for supporting this year’s event.
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