Words and Photos by Sam Kaplan
If you’ve lived in Jacksonville for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen military planes and helicopters flying low and fast around the city. With Jax having multiple military installations within city limits, and another nearby at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay (just about an hour north), this city has the third largest military presence in the country. To put it lightly, Jacksonville has a strong connection with the armed forces.
Now let’s take it back to the ’40s. Seventy-eight years ago, a special group of Navy pilots took to the sky above the Bold City. In the air, they dazzled an estimated 8,500 spectators by flying their group of three blue-and-yellow World War II-fighter planes in a tight formation, flying three planes as one as they performed loops and rolls. They had secretly trained over the Everglades, that way in case anything happened, “only the alligators would know,” said Capt. Roy M. “Butch” Voris, the leader of the trio. Originally dubbed the Navy Flight Exhibition Team, it wasn’t until July of the same year that this group of pilots got a new name, taken from an ad in the New Yorker for a nightclub: the Blue Angels.
Fast forward to the weekend of October 19-20, 2024, and it’s a very similar story, but bigger. This time, six Navy pilots stepped into the cockpits of their blue-and-yellow, jet-powered F/A-18 Super Hornets, in front of a combined crowd of nearly 450,000 (and that’s just the ones who actually got through the gate). They roared into the air, flying formations 18-inches apart, going nearly the speed of sound, and showing the same precision required to land these massive fighters on a moving boat in the pitch black, something all Naval fighter pilots are trained to do.
Whether you view the Blue Angels as a patriotic form of entertainment, noisy propaganda or something that’s just plain cool, there is no denying the history of both the team and this city are intertwined since the beginning. Nearly every year since that first flight, whether at NAS Jacksonville, Jax Beach, or formerly Cecil Field, the Blue Angels have provided entertainment and joy to so many throughout the city.
That’s what has made it so surprising that next year, the Blue Angels will skip Jacksonville for the first time in 23 years (minus an accident, 2013 budget cuts, and COVID-19), with the Jax Beach Sea and Sky Air Show being canceled completely in their absence. “It’s disappointing,” said local photographer Skyler Jie-A-Fa, “The Jacksonville Airshow is where my interest in aviation started.” And Jie-A-Fa isn’t the only one. The Jax air show is the reason I fell in love with aviation, and there are more just like us.
This isn’t the first time there has been a change to the airshow. In 2023, the Sea and Sky show was heavily shortened with only three military demonstrations and zero civilian performers. At the time, News4Jax reported that a civilian performer, who wanted to remain anonymous, stated that the contract they received contained “restrictive and demanding” insurance clauses, as well as heightened costs.
So what happened?
The Blue Angels informed me that their 2025 schedule may have some changes, and that their 2025 and 2026 schedule will be officially released at the International Council of Air Shows in December. However, Jacksonville Beach Mayor Chris Hoffman already announced on Facebook that the show will not be happening, saying, “I’m very disappointed to hear that the City of Jacksonville will not be hosting the 2025 Air Show in Jacksonville Beach. This is always a great event and our residents love celebrating our military and enjoying a weekend of performances and patriotic displays. We look forward to working with the City of Jacksonville to resume the event as soon as possible.”
The City of Jacksonville’s Sports and Entertainment Office, the office responsible for scheduling the event, did not answer any of my questions.
There’s only speculation as to why such a massive event got canceled. But even if no one has said it, it’s pretty easy to guess why: the city didn’t have a contingency plan. Even if we couldn’t get the Blue Angels, there are other military acts that could’ve been scheduled, like the F-35A Demo Team who also just performed at the NAS Jax show, the two other Air Force jet demo teams or one of the single jet Naval demonstration teams. They could’ve tried to bring the Air Force’s Thunderbirds here for the first time or even asked our hometown Florida Air National Guard to show off some shiny, new F-35s (once they get them next year). But instead, we just had to sit back and watch as a Jacksonville staple went from great to small to gone.
And if you think the issue is high expectations for performers, take a look at what other cities around Florida and Georgia have done. Panama City Beach’s 2024 airshow had 17 performers, military and civilian. Miami Beach’s show had 22 demonstrations, all military. Even the damn Vidalia Onion Festival in Georgia managed to get eight performers, including the Blues. All of this while the most populated city in Florida, with deep historical ties to the military, and enough unique aircraft — just within city limits — to put on a show, is now fully showless. I guess if it’s anything outside of a new stadium for the Jaguars, this city won’t put in the effort to have a backup plan.
The yearly airshow, whether over land or water, is/was a Jacksonville staple. The Blue Angels hometown ties and the nostalgia for thousands who have been attending for decades make it a massive event year after year. All city leaders had to do was put in the effort to get performers and not push away the civilian pilots. Yet here we sit, without a show next year.
Ball? Dropped.
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