Today – known as “Schedule Day” – saw US and Canadian military airshow teams announce their schedules for 2024, as next year’s North American show season takes shape.
The schedule release provided an early indication of the scale of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s centenary celebrations. It appears, for example, that the ten-show annual limit on the CF-18 Demonstration Team this season has been lifted in 2024, with 19 shows planned – including one in Europe. The team would return to their pre-2019 era of special paint schemes, with a special centenary livery on the primary display jet.
The schedules also set the tone for airshows in the USA. Notably, it showed that the US Marine Corps intend to support well over twice as many airshows with flying displays this year, with the F-35B and MV-22B stepping up to perform at 14 and 12 events each respectively. The schedules also brought to light several event cancellations and date changes, particularly in the latter part of the season, with the Thunderbirds’ schedule for October and November now bearing little similarity to the provisional 2024 schedule they published a year ago.
The picture for US airshows is still incomplete, however, because the US Navy’s solo and two-ship dispay teams did not release schedules at the Convention, despite having done so last year. Likewise, Canadian airshows are still likely to secure yet more participants, not least because a pending Red Arrows tour to the country is expected to be approved in the coming months. The tour will mainly take place in August.
Another major announcement came from the International Council of Air Shows themselves, who revealed on their website the names of nine airshows expected to host Italy’s Frecce Tricolori in 2024, including three airshows in Canada and six in the USA. The Canadian portion of their tour proved to be smaller than expected, with several major shows notably missing out on the team and a greater focus on the northeastern United States than many had anticipated.
Here are the schedules that have been released today: