BRANSON, MO — With ticket prices at a fraction of the cost of those at alternative entertainment venues, air show spectators rely on the high energy, high value entertainment that an air show provides. Military demonstration teams, aerobatic performers, and vintage aircraft on static display are luring families to airports around the nation in record numbers. Branson Airport’s grand opening celebration featured one of the nation’s largest and most complex air show events, says Bobbi Thompson, Branson Air Show director. Attendance reached some 50,000 spectators before the weekend’s celebration was concluded May 10.

The Branson Airport grand opening celebration May 8-10 featured Branson’s first air show, a complicated affair to organize, says Bobbi Thompson, executive vice president of Airport Business Solutions (ABS) and event director of the Branson Air Show. As an international airport consulting firm, ABS offers analysis and program development to airports, including air show development and management analysis.

“The Branson air show was probably one of the most challenging shows I have ever planned and coordinated, because the entire time we were planning it, they were building the airport from scratch,” says Thompson.

“Anytime you are building a facility of this magnitude, which is planned to open the day after the air show, things change during that construction period, and we had to continually adapt the air show to fit those changes.”

A world record holding pilot and former airport director, Thompson began her 30 plus years of air show experience as an air show performer. She has also been published extensively on the topics of airport privatization, contract management, and minimum standards.

More than 200 volunteers took part in the grand opening celebration of the airport and air show. The non-profit Branson Airshow Inc. is one of five subsidiaries with the Branson Airport LLC parent company that own and operate the airport. The airport’s unique business model, a profit-driven company which receives no federal grant money, allows profits from the air show to go back to the community to promote tourism in new air markets.

Thompson explains that ABS began setting up the air show some ten months prior to the airport grand opening; a very short time to set up and plan a show of Branson’s size and scope, she says.