Air Force captain with local ties among pilots set to take flight in Westmoreland airshow

Plenty of people will be on hand Saturday and Sunday to see Capt. Lindsay Johnson pilot an A-10C Thunderbolt II Air Force jet in the Shop ’n Save Westmoreland Airshow.

Among those heading to Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity for the aerial attraction will be many area relatives and friends of Johnson, who considers Westmoreland County home ground.

“I’ve spent many a summer and holiday up here with my mother’s family,” said Johnson, 31, who is based in Tucson, Ariz. She lived in Jeannette for several years as a young child in the 1990s as her family moved among different states while her father, Gary Johnson, served in the Army.

“For someone who moved around so much, this was truly the one place that stayed constant for me,” she said. “I’ve gone to the (Fort Allen) Frosty Shack on many a summer night.”

Johnson, who previously was part of a skydiving team at the Air Force Academy, has served nine years in the Air Force. She moved into the pilot seat for the Thunderbolt II air show demonstration team in March, beginning a two-year assignment in that role.

This weekend will be the first time many of her mother Donna’s Szabo clan will see her putting the single-seat jet, which is designed for close air support of ground forces, through its paces.

Those who catch her maneuvers in the A-10C, Johnson said, will see “how fast it flies (about 420 mph) and how slow it flies” — when she makes a pass with her landing gear down and addresses the audience via radio hookup.

Also, she said, “I do a couple of slow rolls, a four-point roll and a Cuban 8,” tracing a figure eight in the sky.

Among those watching from the ground will be Lindsay Johnson’s aunt, Dana Livingston, whose Hempfield residence will be home base for her niece during the airshow.

“It’s very exciting,” Livingston said.

“I love it,” Johnson said of her airshow performances. “I like the opportunity to go out and help inspire some young boy or girl to one day give back to their country” through military service.

Her ninth show as a pilot, the Westmoreland demonstration will be especially meaningful.

“I’m able to bring something that’s so important to me to the people who are so important to me,” she said.

Riding along in a Cessna 172 airplane with her father, who went on to become a civilian flight instructor, first put Johnson on the flight path to her current assignment with the Air Force.

On Friday, she joined other pilots at the Palmer airport making practice runs before the weekend show. She was just able to finish her routine before an afternoon rainstorm temporarily halted flights.

Nick Buterbaugh, assistant principal at Rockwood Area High School in Somerset County, and his wife, Amy, brought their three kids — Emersyn, 6, Gannon, 8 and Levi, 11, to the airport to watch the pilots practicing.

The outing was a surprise for the Somerset kids, Buterbaugh said.

“I want to let them see new things as they start to try to figure out what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives,” he said. “You never know. Maybe it’s in a cockpit.”

Levi was anxious to see the headlining Air Force Thunderbirds team take to the air in their F-16 jets.

“I like those red ones that do the cool tricks,” said Emersyn, referring to the three Pitts biplanes flown by the Northern Stars aerobatics team. It’s made up of current and former Royal Canadian Air Force pilots.

Five-year-old Henry Farkas of Unity let the Northern Stars pilots know he wants their job when he grows up. He met the team after their practice fight, along with his sister, Grace, 6, and their parents Emily and Tim, who is a state police trooper out of Greensburg.

The kids were “very excited,” Emily Farkas said. “We were born and raised here, and we’ve never been inside an airshow before.”

A hangarful of additional kids from Westmoreland and Somerset counties who participated in recent Shop With a Cop shopping trips were invited to view Friday’s practice flights, along with their families. The visit was made possible through a partnership with the Westmoreland County Airport Authority and Shop ‘n Save.

Captain Brent Handy, who is based in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, is one of two Northern Stars pilots who previously flew in airshows with the Canadian Forces Snowbirds demonstration team.

The Pitts planes, he said, are “obviously at the opposite end of the spectrum — very much a stick-and-rudder type airplane.

“The thing we really enjoy are what we call tumbling, or, gyroscopic maneuvers. We can actually harness the gyroscopic effect of the propeller to generate some really random and unique maneuvers.”

Crowd favorites, he said, include “head-on crosses, where it looks like we’re going to hit each other. A lot of people just like the formation, when we’re all together.”

Among the lineup’s returning pilots is Greg Koontz of Ashville, Ala., a nearly 50-year veteran of the airshow circuit, who will land his 1946 Piper J-3 Cub on a moving pickup truck as part of a comedy routine.

Of the Westmoreland event, he said, “This is a very big show, especially for this size of town. I don’t think you can go anyplace and find a better one.”