Organizers: The Fort Worth Alliance Air Show Will Go On!
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Organizers of the Fort Worth Alliance Air Show have reached a decision on the future of the event.
Federal budget cuts meant the Navy's Blue Angels had to scrap their 2013 season, including the scheduled performance in Fort Worth.
Alliance Air Services President Tom Harris said organizers for the event faced a difficult decision, but on Tuesday morning proudly proclaimed, "We are here today to officially announce that the show will go on!"
As part of the new entertainment lineup the Alliance Air Show has added the Black Diamond Jet Team, which Harris explained will, "Fly a team of three Arctic camo-painted L-39 aircraft, in military formation, in aerobatic maneuvers."
Fort Worth City Council member Zim Zimmerman said it was very important to keep the show going. "It's really hard, once you lose the show [and] you stop it for a year, to get it cranked back up," he said. "If anything this is a way to put a placeholder in fact in place."
After the grounding of the Blue Angels many feared the show might be canceled. Harris said the sequester-induced budget cuts have been difficult for the U.S. Armed Forces. "The military has been placed in a tough spot," he said. "Air shows are a recruitment tool for them."
Zimmerman said he isn't quite clear on how lawmakers settled on what should and should not be cut. "I'm not sure I agree with all the painful decisions that were made, but it's not in my pay-grade. So, I'll just live with whatever they decide to go do and we'll see how it comes out on the other side."
Rhenda White Brunner, with the USO, said the nonprofit organization has been the recipient of thousands of dollars from the Alliance Air Show each year. "It's something that I guess they [organizers] could have said 'oh well," but they didn't. They said 'how' and they found a way to do it."
Harris said during the upcoming show, "We will be hosting a spectacular World War II historical battle reenactment… that will feature hundreds of authentic American and German re-enactors [sic] along with tanks, armored personal carriers, artillery aerial dog fights, and bomber runs."
The Fort Worth Alliance Air Show takes place October 19 & 20, 2013.
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