"Thunder Over the Boardwalk" Attracts Record Crowd

Courtroom Buzz

Atlantic City Press

August 22, 2008

Jim Beasley Jr. pilots his P-51 Mustang over a record crowd of 700,000 on the beach and boardwalk at the Aug. 20 Atlantic City Air Show

The combination of good weather and a free show led to a record crowd for the sixth annual Atlantic City Air Show: Thunder over the Boardwalk.

Wednesday's show shattered the attendance records set by last year's event, with police estimating that close to 700,000 people packed the beach and Boardwalk. That's 200,000 more people than even the highest estimates for 2007's show.

Organizers had to open up previously closed sections of the beach in front of the tents and viewing stands - barely leaving room for the parachutists' landing pads - in order to make room for the huge swaths of people who made their way onto the sands.

"Our beaches were tight," said Atlantic City Beach Patrol Chief Rod Aluise. "There were heavy crowds all the way down to Albany Avenue from the center of the beach and all the way up on the north side of The Pier. The Boardwalk was packed, from the handicapped ramps all the way up over the dunes."

Not only were the crowds heavy, but they were getting there earlier as well. Families were grabbing spots on the beach hours before the show began at 10 a.m., Aluise said.

Of course, more families on the beach led to more cases of missing children - a task that kept the lifeguards busy for most of the day.

"I don't have hard numbers, but I believe we reunited about 90 to 100 (children)," Aluise said. "Sometimes it took a few minutes, and sometimes it took a half an hour."

One couple within the massive crowd, Joe and Helene Brooks of Aston, Pa., are vacationing in Wildwood this week and still found the time to drive up and see the show. At the same time, some locals have decided to check out the show to see what all the fuss is about.

Although this year's program didn't include the Stealth bomber or Harrier jets of recent years, it did include such mainstays as Air Force F-15s and F-16s and Navy F-18s. Plus there were several jumps by Army parachutists.

"This is my first time, and it's wonderful," said Diane Van Dyke, of Egg Harbor Township, a teacher at the Fernwood Avenue Middle School. "I'm from the area and I've never been down here to see the show. I didn't want to come down because I thought it would be chaos."

Despite the huge numbers, police reported no major incidents. Traffic Unit Capt. Bill McKnight said there was relatively little traffic on the roads immediately following the show - although that wasn't the case in the morning.

"There was backup coming in on the expressway, Route 40 and even Route 30," McKnight said. "It's kind of unusual to see that on Route 30."

The Atlantic City Expressway was backed up to about Exit 7, McKnight said, while Route 40 had bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way out to the West Atlantic City section of Egg Harbor Township as late as an hour into the show.

Lifeguards worried when a banner plane flew along the beach just minutes after the air show kicked off, raising concerns among more than a few people that the restricted airspace was being violated.

But air show organizer David Schultz, of David Schultz Airshows LLC, said that the banner was in fact an official tribute to the late Bess Miller, whom many organizers credit as instrumental to getting the first air show off the ground in 2003.

"We were planning that for months now," Schultz said of the banner, which read, "This 2008 air show is dedicated to Bess Miller."

The tribute was not on the planned schedule distributed before the show, and several air show volunteers who saw the plane were visibly moved as the banner passed by.