Air show returning to Joint Base Charleston for first time in 4 years (2024)

NORTH CHARLESTON — For the first time in four years, Joint Base Charleston is holding its air show this weekend.

On April 9-10, flight demonstration teams, including the Navy's Blue Angels, will take to the skies over the base.

The iconic flight team was scheduled to perform in 2020, but the air show was called off because of the pandemic. Since the show isn't held annually, this will be Joint Base Charleston's first since 2018.

The event is free, but parking passes must be reserved in advance— a new policy this year that's a result of the region's growth, according to the base.

"The city has grown, and the base hasn't," said Lt. Col. Mark Jones, director of the Air Expo.

That was a "lesson learned" in 2018, he said, when some cars had to wait in line for hours at the base's narrow gates. By issuing parking passes, which are also free, attendance should be spread out evenly between the two days of the show, and pass holders will know ahead of time that they'll be guaranteed entry and a parking spot.

The newsystem is meant to create a "more enjoyable experience for all attendees," the base said on its Air Expo website.

"I think we have a really good plan this year," Jones said.

Passes are required per vehicle, not per person, but they're mandatory for every car, even if someone has regular parking access on the base. Parking passes will be valid for one day — Saturday or Sunday — and one pass is allowed per vehicle. Getting to the show via ride-hailing services such as Uber or Lyft is "highly discouraged," and there will be no designated area for ride-share drivers to pick up riders.

Parking passes should be reserved online. The link to claim can be found atjbcharleston.com/airexpo.

The base is issuing up to 10,000 parking passes per day. About 60 percent of the available passes have been claimed so far, Jones said, and the base expects all of them will be reserved, with Saturday passes running out first, likely by Thursday. An estimated 60,000 spectators will come out to the air show on Saturday and Sunday combined, Jones said.

Military families are invited to come to the base April 8. The full aerial show will be on display, but the base won't be open to the public. Parking passes won't be required that day, and there will be less traffic to contend with, so those families are strongly encouraged to attend Friday.

The base will open its gates for the event at 9 a.m. each day.

The air show doesn't start until about noon, but aviation enthusiasts will be lined up at opening time in the morning, Jones said, to see the about 24 aircraft that will be on display on the ground. Those will include historic planes, like a C-47 from World War II, and new ones, like a KC-46 refueling aircraft.

A C-17, which flies military and humanitarian missions around the globe from Joint Base Charleston, will also be on display. The C-17's cargo hold will feature posters explaining some of the past operations that Joint Base Charleston has been part of, Jones said.

There will also be concessions and a kids' zone, and the base has cleared out an entire hangar for STEM-related displays. Exhibitors will include Boeing Co., NASA, the nonprofit Water Mission and Charleston County schools, Jones said. The STEM hangar will be set up all weekend for Air Expo attendees to tour, and some school groups will be coming to the base on Friday for field trips to see it.

The Black Daggers,the U.S. Army Special Operations Command Parachute Demonstration Team, will kick off the air show.

Therewill be a C-17 demonstration, and the Viper Demo Team based at Shaw Air Force Base near Columbia, which just had its first air show in six years April 2-3, will perform.

Staged "dogfights" complete with pyrotechnics will be performed between a P-51 fighter and a FW-190 German fighter aircraft, plus a DH-115 Vampire fighter and a MiG-17 Soviet aircraft.

The headlining Blue Angels are expected to be the show's finale.