Photo by Curtis Galbraith.

By Curtis Galbraith

City Hall

City council approves grant for Grande Prairie Regional Airshow

Apr 9, 2024 | 6:00 AM

The Grande Prairie Regional Airshow is getting some funding help from the city.

Council approved a Large Scale Tourism Grant for $50,000 at Monday’s meeting.

Event organizer Bruce Tattrie says one of the reasons the local Rotary clubs wanted to have an airshow was to bring attention to the proposed upgrade to D Company Armouries.

“The D Coy Community Hub Project has been going on now, through Rotary, for about five years. We’ve got $2.4 million raised towards that project. We need $3.8 million.”

“We were trying to come up with something novel to offer the people in Grande Prairie to help donate and that’s where we landed on the airshow.”

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Any profits from the show would be donated to the project.

Tattrie says they also want to raise awareness of the Canadian Armed Forces.

“In these times, I think there’s a lot of people, active service members, that are doing a lot of things that don’t make the news and we’d just like to thank them for it.”

The show is set for July 27 and 28 at the Grande Prairie Airport. There will be a practice day on July 26.

Tattrie says they have a full list of acts booked, including performers dressed as comic book characters, a twin engine jet car, a biplane and wing walkers.

“We’ve got T33s coming from Ace Maker. That’s the fastest fixed-wing jet that was made. Now, the wings all kind of move on the new, modern jets, but it’ll do close to 600 knots. (These are) real fast and (are) cool-looking planes.”

Tattrie says World War II-era aircraft like a B25 bomber, a Messerschmidt and a Corsair will also be part of the show. There will also be four A-10 Thunderbolts, also called Warthogs, and four F-22 Raptors, jets that are worth $360 million each.

Tattrie says while they have been able to get the US Air Force to send some planes because the number of assets it has, they are still waiting on the Royal Canadian Air Force.

“With the Canadian military, we have a very limited amount of assets. They want to support all airshows, but they just don’t have the planes.”

“This is our first year. We’ve been in touch with them. They’ve been great to deal with but they said ‘Look, six weeks out is the earliest we can let you know if we’re going to send anything.”

Groups like the Snowbirds are booked two years ahead of time, so will not be part of this show.

There will also be motocross freestyle team performing, food trucks, vendor booths and kid’s activities.

Tattrie says there hasn’t been an airshow in Grande Prairie in close to 20 years. He is hoping for a crowd of 10,000 each day.

Organizers are hoping in the future, the show will be held every second year.