Blue Angels pilot talks Coulee Region scenery from sky during La Crosse stop ahead of June airshow

After taking two summers off, the Deke Slayton Airfest returns to La Crosse in June with the popular Blue Angels flying team as the main attraction.

Two of the Blue Angels pilots brought one of the Navy jets to the La Crosse Regional Airport on Monday to promote their upcoming visit. One of those flyers was Navy Lt. Commander Brian Vaught, who got a birds-eye view of the river valley.

“I was surprised by some of the terrain a little bit,” Vaught said, “so that’s kind of a big reason why we come out here, is you can kind of glean a lot from all the major mapping systems out there, but seeing it real time is important, so we bring back all our knowledge to the team,” which is training now in warmer parts of the U.S.

The Airfest began as a yearly event, but is now only held in years when a performance group, such as the Blue Angels, is available to appear. Airfest director Bruce Mathew said the scheduling is a matter of economics.

“It’s difficult to be able to come up with enough money to have the show, and not have a big team to draw in a crowd,” Mathew said, “’cause we need enough crowd to pay tickets to actually be able to break even.”

The most recent Airfest, held in 2021, also featured the Blue Angels. Before that, Airfest hadn’t been to La Crosse since 2014 for various reasons, including road construction on the Interstate 90 overpass between Wisconsin and Minnesota.

It was at Christmastime last year when the Angels officially announced that they had added La Crosse to their 2024 schedule — though WIZM had that story in March of 2021.

The Deke Slayton Airfest, named after the Sparta native who was chosen as one of the original Mercury astronauts, is set for June 15-16. The Blue Angels are then slated to perform in Eau Claire the following summer.