TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (Tribune News Service) — Two military jet demonstration teams will tear through the sky for the National Cherry Festival’s 2025 air show.

The International Council of Air Shows announced Tuesday that U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command’s F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team and the U.S. Marines F-35B Lightning II Demonstration Team are coming to the next National Cherry Festival, said Kat Paye, the festival’s director.

Speaking by phone from the council’s ongoing convention in Las Vegas, she said festival organizers are excited that both demonstration teams picked Traverse City for 2025.

There’s more: To celebrate both the festival’s 100th anniversary and the 250th birthday of the United States, the 2026 festival will feature a nighttime flying performance during TC Boom Boom Club’s July 4 fireworks display, Paye said. Nate Hammond of GhostWriter Airshows and Kyle Fowler of GO EZ Aerobatics will take part in the coordinated show, launching pyrotechnics from their planes as they do.

“It’s something new we think will be really fun for opening day,” Paye said. “As we celebrate 100 years of the National Cherry Festival, we thought it was a great piece to start talking about all of the different things we’ll be doing for our 100th anniversary coming up.”

Paye said she’s expecting to hear about the festival’s 2026 air show in 2025. Festival organizers requested a demonstration team for that year, which the USAF Air Combat Command will consider along with the rest. The command will pick which teams perform where.

Other performers will take part in both shows, including civilian flyers and staples like the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Traverse City, Paye said.

The F-35B Lightning II is a supersonic fighter jet with short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities, allowing it to take off from short runways and land vertically like a helicopter, according to developer Lockheed Martin. It has a maximum speed of Mach 1.6 and is meant to serve in several air combat roles.

The F-22 Raptor is faster, with a maximum speed of roughly Mach 2, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. It can fly at supersonic speeds for long distances, has stealth capabilities and was designed as an air superiority fighter.

Paye said both aircraft qualify as “high-performance” under an agreement between the festival and Cherry Capital Airport.

The Northwest Regional Airport Authority — the airport’s governing body — approved a three-year agreement in April with the festival to host its air show. Reaching that agreement didn’t come easy, as both festival organizers and airport administrators argued over terms in a dispute that, at one point, seemed to threaten to ground the 2024 air show.

Airport Director Kevin Klein said the agreement settled issues like high-performance aircraft prompting airspace closures and interrupting airport operations. Demonstration teams like the U.S. Navy Blue Angels are limited to performing from 3-4 p.m., while any rehearsals would be scheduled around the airport’s commercial flights and other airport tenants’ activities.

“So I think it’s great that we have the agreement,” he said. “I look forward to all the acts that we have for the next two years.”

Both Klein and Paye separately said the F-22 Raptor and F-35B Lightning II teams fall within the agreement, and neither anticipated any issues with hosting the teams.

Looking ahead, Paye said she believes both airport administrators and festival organizers are excited to keep working together to make the air show a reality.

“I think you’re always going to have challenges to work through, as they’re a growing airport and we’ve got our longstanding tradition, and we’ll just work through those as they come up,” she said.

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