Wings and Wheels, Utah’s Festival of Speed airshow, celebrated its 10-year anniversary with two days of events this weekend, Sept. 22-23.
The event was held at the Spanish Fork Municipal Airport and showcased unique displays of cars and planes available for visitors to see up close. The exhibitions showed off a number of military and stunt aircraft as well as classic and exotic cars.
According to the event organizers, the airshow portion of the weekend’s festival drew thousands of spectators. Several different airplanes such as the MX2, BF9-2 and T-33 performed a multitude of in-air stunts for more than three hours.
Danny Sorensen and Brad Wursten were two pilots who performed in Saturday’s air show.
“This is a pretty special airplane,” the announcer said over the event speakers as Bountiful native Danny Sorensen flew by.
The plane Sorensen flew during this weekend’s event was his custom BF9-2 Phantom airplane, “Unfinished Business,” which he built from scratch.
While flying to Wyoming in 2018, Sorensen’s plane crashed because of engine failure. Miraculously, Sorensen survived with no injuries, but his plane was not so lucky. In a Facebook post made after the accident, Sorensen confirmed that “Unfinished Business” was totaled.
Sorensen documented the process of repairing his plane on his Facebook page, where he gave a behind-the-scenes look into what it took to build an aircraft. Once “Unfinished Business” was ready to fly again, Sorensen went right back to performing at air shows.
Additionally, Sorensen was featured in a Meet the Mormon vignette in 2018 that followed the story of his life.
Brad Wursten was another Utah native who flew in the air show. According to his website, Wursten has had an interest in flying since he was four years old. He has now logged almost 4,000 hours flying a variety of aircraft and flew his custom airbrushed MX2 plane for Saturday’s performance.
“I’m so glad to be your hometown hero,” Wursten said.
The air show ended with several flybys by the T-33 Blue Angels jet alongside a pyrotechnics display ignited in the field by the runway.
“We are super grateful to all our volunteers that help out,” Airport Manager Christian Davis said. “And we are super happy that we’ve had the turnout we’ve had this year.”
The event also offered helicopter and B-17 bomber rides above and around the Spanish Fork Municipal Airport, a variety of food trucks and vendor tents.
