The U.S. Navy Blue Angels arrived at Republic Airport in East Farmingdale on Wednesday, setting up for the FourLeaf Air Show at Jones Beach as the squadron’s F/A-18 Super Hornets swept low over Long Island and touched down one by one after a formation flyby. Hundreds of onlookers lined the airport perimeter to watch the landing.
The arrival lands at the start of a weekend many families plan around, and Kimberly Rinyu said she will be at the airport all weekend with her school-age children to see the jets. The show runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday and Monday, with the Blue Angels headlining for the 11th time.
The Blue Angels are back on Long Island with a familiar mix of spectacle and homecoming. Cody Farrell, a crew chief from Mastic Beach, said being back on Long Island was an absolute honor and privilege, a sentiment that fits a squadron that keeps drawing the same crowd year after year.
This year’s show is also doing something different. It has been moved to the July Fourth weekend as a tribute to the nation’s semiquincentennial, even though the air show is usually treated as the unofficial kickoff to summer over Memorial Day weekend. That shift gives the event a different calendar and a different feel, without changing what people come for: the Blue Angels, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Snow Birds, and the stunt and precision pilots who will fill the two-day lineup.
For many spectators, the appeal is less about the schedule than the close-up view. Gabrielle Maccarino brought her children to the outside of Republic Airport’s main terminal to watch the jets land, saying she had never been to anything like it and that the planes looked small in the sky even though they were huge. Kimberly Rinyu put it more simply: she wants to be there Friday for practice and back again Sunday, up close and personal, to watch the aircraft take off and land.
That is why the Blue Angels’ arrival matters now. They are not just passing through; they are setting the pace for a show that has made them its centerpiece 11 times, and for a Long Island crowd that knows exactly why it keeps coming back.
