— A consortium of investors that is negotiating to buy the Sussex Airport plans to bring back the Sussex Air Show, an end-of-the-summer tradition for more than 30 years that was last held in 2004, said a spokesman for the group.
The annual aerobatics extravaganza could return as early as next summer, said Rick Asper, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., attorney and aviation consultant working for Sussex Aviation LLC.
“We believe the air show was beloved. It could return within the next 12 months or the next 24 months,” Asper said.
“We want to return the air show as a way to demonstrate to the public the effectiveness of the airport. People attending air shows get to see how an airport works,” he said.
The Sussex Air Show traditionally featured a display of breathtaking aerobatics, including performances by some of the nation’s top stunt pilots, and was one of only a handful of air shows left in New Jersey.
Past shows included performances by aerobatics champions The X-Team; Masters of Disaster; Sean Tucker; the Warbirds; the Misty Blues, an all-women skydiving team; and Roger Lehnert, as well as military fly-bys.
“The sale is not just about the pocketbook, the air show is a heartfelt issue” for Sussex Aviation, which is made up of a group of investors that includes a number of pilots, many of whom performed at the Sussex Air Show, said Asper.
The airport is on 125 acres on Route 639 in Wantage, where a township official welcomed both the pending sale of the airport and the return of the air show.
“Certainly we’d welcome the return of the air show, a number of our residents have fond memories of it,” said Township Administrator Jim Doherty, adding that he hoped the new airport owners would keep the town better informed about emergency management issues related to the air show.
“As long as we keep open the line of communications, it’s going to be a wonderful thing,” he said.
The three-day air show attracted about 25,000 people annually from throughout the region and was held on the last weekend in August, a couple of weekends after the conclusion of the county’s biggest long-running attraction, the New Jersey State Fair/Sussex County Farm and Horse Show.
The air show, dubbed as “the biggest little air show in the East,” began in 1966, the year the airport’s 3,500-foot runway was first paved. The shows ended in 2005 when airport owner Paul Styger, now 91, announced the pending sale of the airport, which never materialized.
The sale of the airport by Styger, who opened the airport in 1953, is pending before the Federal Aviation Administration and the state Department of Transportation, said Asper.
A judge approved the $1.2 million sale on Dec. 6 to Sussex Aviation and principal investor Alan Antaki, an associate of PHT Aerospace, a Pompton Plains-based firm whose customers include the U.S. military and major defense contractors.
The courts took over the sale of the airport in 2010 after Styger pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $375,000 in federal grant money that was intended to be used for uupgrades at the airport.
Doherty said he was looking forward to working with the new airport owners. There is more than $450,000 in back taxes and liens on the property. Of that amount, nearly $400,000 is due to outside lien holders and more than $60,000 is owed to the township.
“Having an economically viable, active airport is much preferable to having an inactive airport,” he said.