The Southport Air Show has been a crackingly good event for many years. However, organisation behind the recent show left a lot to be desired.
The scene at Birkdale was chaotic.
The abysmal security situation was reminiscent of an episode of the Keystone Cops. People wandered freely into the alleged exclusion zones, often without challenge. Hard – pressed coast guards whizzing about on quadbikes tried and largely failed to direct people off the shore. Increasingly frustrated police officers on the same type of vehicles were also having little effect at crowd control.
Seemingly oblivious to the dangers, some people blissfully walked their dogs from Birkdale up to the pier, as others watched in disbelief.
Several groups of people managed to get all the way to the tideline, as high-powered aircraft flew overhead.
Warning / exclusion zone signs on the mud-filled path to the beach at Birkdale were absent. Many folks struggled to take their families towards the shoreline as officials watched the chaos.
Anxious officials were heard telling confused families that they needed to move several yards over to one side of the mud track “or else the planes could not fly”.
The entire scene was as disordered as the terrible state of the mud track. The seemingly unsafe ramshackle metal fencing did one thing only – it ensured that families were forced to stagger through the thick mud. The sunny first day of the show was the worse, due to more people being present. On the second day the mud track and dunes at Birkdale were more like a ghost town.
During previous events, the hills had been packed with crowds of plane spotters. All in all, the 2023 event at Birkdale was a shambolic free for all disaster with little or no properly coordinated organisation.
A great deal of heated online public criticism has been expressed against the organisers of the latest event and much of it is valid.
It’s a great shame that the brave air crews, who risk so much to bring us all such wonderful entertainment, have to witness the disorder on the ground.