Efforts to put on Sky Parade this year have been discontinued because of a scarcity of money and the inability to schedule a jet team performance.
Sky Parade 2000, which featured the U.S. Navy Blue Angels jet team, drew spectators from a wide area to Greenwood-Leflore Airport last October. Organizers estimated the crowd to be 100,000 people.
The weekend also included civilian aerobatic demonstrations, a motorcycle show, carnival activities, exhibits and musical entertainment.
Richard Dillon, Sky Parade's executive director, gave three reasons why this year's event will not be held.
First, neither of the jet teams - the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels and the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds - scheduled Greenwood as a stop this year.
Air shows can be put on without those big names, but they wouldn't draw as many people from places such as Memphis or Jackson, Dillon said. An event in the town the size of Greenwood needs well-known performers to be profitable, he said.
The second reason was that the state Department of Tourism has drastically reduced the amount of its advertising grants. Sky Parade organizers need to advertise in Jackson and Memphis to attract enough visitors, Dillon said.
These grants are likely to suffer the effects of state budget cuts, because many public officials don't give tourism development the same priority as economic development, he said.
"They told us it was going to be practically nothing this year," he said.
The third reason is that the airport's 6,500-foot runway is 500 feet too short to accommodate many military planes.
The airport has been planning to extend the runway to 8,000 feet, but much work lies ahead, said Charles Allen, the manager.
A runway must be 8,000 feet for a 747 jet to take off with a full load of fuel, he said.
The project is on a list of proposals at the Federal Aviation Administration but hasn't received complete approval yet. The FAA must be satisfied that the extension is necessary for the airport, Allen said.
Allen said he and others are still collecting information from the Memphis Group about what maintenance projects might be done there. That will be part of the information used to justify the extension, he said.
In addition, an environmental impact study must be done and land must be bought before construction can begin. The effort also could be slowed if a lawsuit is filed over the land, he said.
"Right now we really don't know where we stand on the time frame and so forth," Allen said.
U.S. Sen. Trent Lott has been trying to help move the proposal along, Allen said.
Suzy Gordon, executive director of the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau, called the cancellation of Sky Parade "a terrible setback" but said she understood the reasons behind it.
Greenwood-Leflore Airport is a good venue for this kind of air show because it doesn't required the rescheduling of a large number of flights, Gordon said.
However, she added, small towns have more trouble attracting major sponsors than large cities that are near large corporations.
"I really feel like, when we our corporate sponsorship behind it, that it does bring people into our area, and that does have an economic impact," she said.
