I enjoyed reading your article today on-line. As I grew up in Fayetteville, I take interest in finding out that the Canadian Snowbirds are coming to southern Atlanta and the area. My parents and grandparents still live in the area.

I find some things extremely interesting in your article. We are an air show coordination and production company that is based outside of Philadelphia, Pa.

It appears that the show last year was raked over the coals by their coordinator at $12,000. We generally charge around $4,500 for a weekend and are considered the best in the business and do more air shows than anyone else in the industry. We do both civilian air shows as well as military ones. (Clarification: I must point out that we have never bid on this show as it is not of interest to us as we have air shows in other locations at generally the same time of year.)

Based on the article and the money distribution shown, Is there general mismanagement down there?

The other thing that was misstated in the article was the fact that the Snowbirds are booked years in advance. The applications for the Snowbirds first must arrive at 17 Wing Winnipeg no later than Oct. 1 of the previous year. After many, many reviews at their home base of CFB Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, the show dates for the year are announced in early December.

Any show with a runway of 4,000 feet of longer can house the Snowbirds.

I recommend you look at the following web sites in order to get information about what the CAF and the airport will have to do in order to conduct a safe air show per the Snowbirds standards. There are also several FAA restrictions as well.

http://www.snowbirds.dnd.ca/guide/guide.html

http://www.faa.gov/avr/afs/edhome.htm

I hope that they have a very successful event and that the Snowbirds will make this a common occurrence every few years to make it that far south. I wish all of the air show committee the best of luck as this will not be a small undertaking — air shows never are.

It is truly rare that they travel this far south and Peachtree City and the whole Atlanta area should be happy to see them for this two-day event. They are some of the best in the business.

David Schultz, President
David Schultz Airshows
Coatesville, Pa.
http://www.chesco.com/~schultz

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