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Airshows 101 at ICAS 2011
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- Published on: Airspeed
- Posted: 5 months ago
These are the show notes to an audio episode. You can listen to the show audio by clicking here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/airspeed/AirspeedICASAS101.mp3. Better yet, subscribe to Airspeed through iTunes or your other favorite podcatcher. It’s all free!
I’m once again at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas for the annual convention of the International Council of Air Shows (“ICAS”).
It’s the annual event at which the airshow community in North America gets together to talk about the recently completed season, catalog the collective experience, and plan for the next year’s operations. Just about everyone who matters in the airshow industry is here in person or represented in one way or another.
I attend ICAS each year on media credentials. It’s a great opportunity to meet the performers whom I cover and make connections that help me to produce the show. The T-38 episode from January of this year was a direct result of a contact made at ICAS. Additionally, many of the performer cameos that you’re going to see in Acro Camp resulted from conversations over coffee or beer at ICAS.
In addition to meeting old friends and making new ones, ICAS is an opportunity dig into the details of the programs and processes that have made airshows some of the most exciting, yet safest, forms of entertainment available in North America. ICAS programming covers every level of airshow savvy, including a lot of material for those who are new to airshows or are just beginning to become involved in organizing and administering airshows. For those people, ICAS presents a seminar on Sunday of each year of the convention called Aishows 101: Air/Ground Operations Training Seminar.
Last year, I took the next step. Even though I essentially get in free, I paid to attend Airshows 101 as a full-up student. I wanted to understand more about what goes into actually staging an airshow. And, while nobody walks out of Airshows 101 with everything they need to go put on an airshow, if you listen closely and ask a lot of questions, the program leaves you with a canoe-paddle-to-the-face appreciation for the depth and breadth of what goes into the process.
I entertained fantasies last year of being able to put out an episode from ICAS that gave a genuine idea of what the class is like. I gave up around 0200 local the morning after the class.
The approach this time is a little different. I took the audio home last year and edited it to create a few good examples of what the presentation is like. And I attended again this year, but spent more of the time putting together the text for this episode. Thus, the presentation audio that you’ll hear in this episode is from ICAS 2010. But, having attended on Sunday, it’s virtually the same as the presentation that happened today in 2011.
This is not an episode for the casual aviation enthusiast. This is about details, regulations, team requirements, and crowd experience. If you’re looking for lighter fare, I recommend one of the 200 or so back episodes until I get another one out. But, if you’re looking for a genuine scratch into the surface of what it takes to put on an airshow, this episode is a good starting place.
I’m going to cover four basic topics. The request for military support, the general timeline, the Big Kahuna (namely FAA Order 8900.1), and the FAA Form 7711-2 waiver. There’s a whole lot more to it than this, but it’ll give you a small taste of what goes on in the background.
Airshows 101 is presented by four experienced air bosses. Bill Snellgrove, George Cline, Ralph Royce, and Larry Strain. The air boss is in charge of most of the air operations at any given airshow. And most air bosses are also valuable consultants to airshow organizers, assisting with planning, waivers, interaction with other stakeholders, and lots more. The job that they do from the roof of that trailer out in front of the crowd line is just the tip of the air boss iceberg.
Military
Support: DD Form 2535The key to military support is DD Form 2535 (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/infomgt/forms/eforms/dd2535.pdf).
[Audio: Form 2535.]
In 2010, the Blue Angels went to a two-year system. If you want the Blues, you have to apply before August 1 of the second year prior to when you want them. In other words, as I sit here in 2011, we’re past the deadline for applying for the 2013 season. Even in the case of the Thunderbirds and others, August 1, 2011 was the deadline to apply for the 2012 season.
Timeline Generally
Notwithstanding the military team deadlines, most essential planning starts at least eight months before the show. That’s the time to survey the event environment, look at the regs, and do the basic legwork to be sure that you can have the show at the intended airport.
Assuming that the local planning for the event site is moving along reasonably, the biggest event in the early planning is the ICAS convention. The Thunderbirds, Blue Angels, and Snowbirds announce their schedules for the upcoming year (or, in the case of the Blues, the year after that). That’s a key programming point and it allows show organizers to figure out what kind of show they’re going to have. You select other performers based, to some extent, on whether you have a jet team performing.
One wild card: The Black Diamond Jet Team (formerly known as Heavy Metal) is a fully-sponsored L-39 and MiG team. It’s not the Thunderbirds or the Blues or the Snowbirds. But it’s a genuine jet formation team that flies profiles that are very similar to, if not better than, the military jet teams in many respects. It’s too early to tell after just one season, but it’s going to be interesting to see if Black Diamond can anchor an airshow as well as the military teams. I’ve been lucky to get to know many of the guys from Black Diamond and interviewed two to appear in the first Acro Camp film. I’m pretty excited about the possibility that a purely civilian bootstrap organization can go anchor big shows just as well as the military teams.
In any case organizers spend a lot of time on the exhibit hall floor and in the halls talking to performers and trying to nail down a slate of performers to fill out their show programs. There’s a little of everything. Airplanes and helicopters, to be sure. But also jet trucks, pyro, and other attractions.
And, in any case, many of the vendors are also here. Providers of things like radios, PA equipment, golf carts, ticketing, food, midway attractions, aerial video, insurance, announcing, airboss services, and everything else that it takes to put together an airshow.
Back at the show site (and the show site’s FSDO), the plans keep going for the next few months. Work on things like the operations plan, FAA/TC coordination, waiver applications, emergency plans, locating arresting barriers if you need them, locating other support equipment, and so on.
Things get more immediate when you hit the four-month point. At that time, you submit your FAA Form 7711-2, the request for the airshow waiver. You also request military statics, arrange hotels and rental cars, and get serous about your local police, fire, EMT, and other planning.
At three months out, you finalize your air-ground procedures, get working on your static arrival and parking plan, start holding monthly organization and staff meeting plans, and nail down your static display, security, communications, and vehicle control plans.
At two months out, things get really busy. Organization and staff meetings go to bi-weekly. You’re thinking transportation, ingress, and egress plans for performers and staff. If you’re really smart, you run at least a couple of tabletop exercises with your section chiefs, especially your emergency responders.
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