A Year In Recap

Thunder Pig has safely arrived home from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, completing what has been another successful Air Show Season.

A Year in Recap…

Looking back to earlier this year, we could not have hoped for the season we ended up flying. Typically by March/April of any given year, we know of all the air shows we will be attending for the upcoming season. But this year, by that point, we had only booked around 3 shows due to the economy’s state and the looming Sequester which ended up canceling all Military Air Shows. In years past, Military Air Shows have made up a big part of our season, so with the sequester, we lost a lot of our prospective Air Shows.

However, Things began to turn around for us. Air Shows started to trickle in. Shows that had previously said they could not have us this year began calling us back to ask if we could still make it. We also had Movie and TV production companies calling us, which is nothing new to us, but not on the scale we did this year.

We attended Air Shows in Waterloo -Ontario, Canada, Somerset -Pennsylvania, Dayton -Ohio, Willow Run -Michigan, Erie -Pennsylvania, Kent -Ohio, and Winston-Salem -North Carolina.

We also took part in the filming of the Pilot Episode for the New NBC show called “Believe”, in Farmington – New York, which is supposed to air either this fall or next spring. We filmed a Blockbuster Movie that will air in the Spring of 2014. And finally we filmed for a TV series called “Alpha House”, in Farmingdale – New York, which is from Amazon Studios.

We had another Movie/TV show contact us earlier in the year that wanted us to film in Atlanta, but due to “Believe” we could not make it as it was over the same dates.

None of this would have been made possible without the help of our volunteers at Air Heritage who not only maintain the plane but also put forward their own time and money, in many cases, towards the cause. Mechanically, we had a few snags this year, but we were able to get the plane fixed and continue to attend the shows we said we would. WE DID NOT HAVE TO CANCEL A SINGLE AIR SHOW THIS YEAR!

While we would not be able to fly the plane without the help of our members, the people who especially deserve a HUGE THANKS for keeping the Thunder Pig flying are the thousands of visitors who toured through the aircraft at the Air Shows we attended as well as all of the sponsors for the various Air Shows who contributed towards us being able to attend. All of the donations we receive from these Air Shows go towards the maintenance of Thunder Pig.

We eagerly wait to see you next year on the air show network with Thunder Pig AND Luck of the Irish!

And on that note, THANK YOU Everyone!