Randy Ball flies his MiG17F with afterburner during the 2021 Defenders of Liberty Air & Space Show at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana.

From Staff Reports

A Tyler pilot is starring in a new reality show.

The aviation reality series, based on a Smithsonian Air & Space article about a remarkable jet restored to fly at 600 mph, will begin streaming Thursday night.

“The Airshow Team” combines the thrill of the aerial cockpit experience with hands-on maintenance in the hangar, all performed by the talented team behind one of the world’s most famous aerobatic jets.

The first season, dubbed “Airshow Team: Red 620,” stars East Texan Randy Ball, a commercial captain and civilian demo pilot with a penchant for flying upside-down at high speeds; Jon Blanchette, octogenarian owner/restorer of the only flying MiG-17PF in the world, Red 620; and Erin Kelley, the only female crew chief of an aerobatic jet demo team in North America.

Ball frequently flies MiGs around Tyler, one of the locations where the series is filmed.

Jet demonstration pilot Ball has housed his aircraft at the Tyler Pounds Regional Airport for over 20 years. Ball, with over three decades of experience, flies jets for about 2.5 million people at airshows every year across North America.

“Airshow Team is like Top Gun meets Top Gear,” said Lynn Rebuck, creator, producer and director of the series that evolved from her Smithsonian story. “Viewers get to experience the thrill of the 600-mph ride from inside the cockpit and then go into the hangar to see what it takes to make the jet fly.”

While the first season primarily follows Ball, Kelley, and Blanchette, it also features performances by the USAF Thunderbirds and other military jet demo teams including the F-22 Raptor, F-16s, B-2 bomber, and B-52s, as well as top civilian airshow performers.

Rebuck hopes to expand the franchise to follow other airshow teams in future seasons.

But it all begins with the simple story of a man who was determined to make a rusted old jet fly.

As a retired General Motors engineer, Blanchette did what many believed impossible: he bought a scrapped Polish fighter jet and turned it into an airshow star. He relied only on his retirement funds, not corporate funding, to restore it.

Blanchette then tapped accomplished Ball, an airshow performer who boasts more time flying MiGs than any other pilot in North America, to fly the jet at airshows. Ball and his traveling mechanic, Erin Kelley, inspected and tweaked Red 620 before Ball launched into the sky for its first post-restoration flight and began flying it at airshows on the East Coast.

Impressed with the pristine restoration, Ball urged Blanchette to enter the jet into competition at AirVenture Oshkosh, the largest and most prestigious airshow in the country. Blanchette’s jet took top honors in its Warbird division and received the coveted Silver Wrench for the Best Restoration.

Those achievements landed Blanchette’s jet on the cover of Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine, thanks to Rebuck, a producer and journalist who met the team at an airshow in Pennsylvania.

“When I first spoke with Jon, his wife Bev, and Randy at the airshow, I knew this incredible story of this jet needed to be told,” Rebuck said. “But then I watched Randy fly Red 620 just 20 feet off the ground approaching the speed of sound and realized that it needed to be seen.”

So Rebuck began filming airshow performances, interviews with the team, and documenting the team’s jet maintenance routines and repairs. The series, as Ball says, shows “all the stuff that goes on at airshows that you just never see.”

In one episode, viewers will get to see Ball and his team of volunteers put the tail back onto a MiG-17 fighter jet. Another shows Kelley reconfiguring the oxygen system.

“It’s rare that a jet demo pilot works on his own planes,” Rebuck said, “and even more rare that a female mechanic is shown performing jet repairs in a streaming series.”

Airline staffing shortages have disrupted travel worldwide in recent years, arising from shortages of maintenance technicians, ground crew, and pilots. Multiple industry sources anticipate that the worldwide aviation industry will require at least an additional 500,000 technicians to maintain aircraft in the coming few years, and about 300,000 new pilots to fly them.

Rebuck opted to stream the Airshow Team for free to encourage a broader audience to pursue careers in aviation.

“Airshow Team: Red 620” will stream for free on AirshowTeam.TV. The family-friendly series will premiere globally with the first two episodes of its season on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. CST followed by one new episode every Thursday for the next 10 weeks.

Airshow Team is produced by LITitz Media Group, an award-winning, woman-owned digital content creation company.

AirshowTeam.TV is a streaming channel whose mission is to provide high-quality, family-friendly video content that inspires, educates, and entertains viewers. It aims to encourage viewers of all ages to pursue their dreams, and to encourage individuals to pursue careers in aviation, engineering, technology, and filmmaking.