Blue Angels to Appear in Louisiana This Weekend

The Blue Angels, the United States Navy precision demonstration flight team is making an appearance in Louisiana this weekend and the weather forecast for their performance is shaping up to be epic. The team generally performs some 60 shows per year each one seemingly more breathtaking that the one before.

The team has just has already made two appearances on the west coast in California. This past weekend the Blue Angels were featured in Wings of Solano at Travis Air Force Base. The weekend before that they were the stars of the NAF El Centro Festival of Flight.

Over the course of an exhibition flight the pilots of the F/A-18 Super Hornet aircraft will put themselves and their equipment through the paces of some 20 different maneuvers. Some of those maneuvers include the entire team while others focus on the solo talents of the pilots of these amazing machines.

A typical Blue Angels performance lasts just a little under one hour, so you can expect to be looking upwards for about 40 minutes. But let me warn you, these amazing pilots and aircraft can be very sneaky.

That maneuver is called a "sneak pass". While the audience is focused on the aircraft in plain sight, another aircraft is traveling above the speed of sound. This means the plane arrives over the audience before the audiences realizes it's there. In military terms this would be a huge tactical advantage.

Where Will the Blue Angels Be Performing in Louisiana?

The Blue Angels demonstration team is the star of the show at this weekend's 2024 Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans Air Show. The team will make an appearance on Saturday and again on Sunday. The show will take place at 800 Russell Drive in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. The gates for the airshow will open at 8 am on Saturday and at 8 am on Sunday.

The show will begin at 10 am and should conclude by 4 pm each day. The cost of tickets for the 2024 Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Show in the Greater New Orleans area is $60 for reserved seating. However, parking and admission to the show itself are free.

This weekend's show will also include several other airborne acts and demonstrations as well as long list of static displays. Of course there will be some jet powered automobiles and a skydiving demonstration as well.

Based on the current published schedule this will be your only opportunity to catch the Blue Angels in Louisiana this year. The team will have a featured performance at Wings Over Houston in Texas later this year in October but they won't be back over Louisiana soil until October of 2025 when they are scheduled to be featured performers at the Chennault Air Show in Lake Charles.