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Thousands of aviation enthusiasts from across the country will come out for the 48th annual Sun 'n Fun Aerospace Expo from April 5-10.

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds will perform at Sun 'n Fun for the first time since 2016. And the drone light show will double in size.

In addition to showcasing their new Super Hornets, this year the Blue Angels are featuring Fat Albert, the team’s newly acquired C130J Hercules transport. The plane is noted for its short takeoff and landing abilities. Originally scheduled to arrive at the airport at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, the team was delayed by about 2½ hours because of severe weather sweeping through Pensacola, where the team is based. However, Fat Albert crewmembers were on hand by 10 a.m. That plane arrives in advance of air shows caring U.S. Navy aircraft maintenance personnel to prepare show sites for the jets’ ar...

The plane landed less than a mile east of the Airport Road exit, not far from the Publix Super Markets headquarters. LPD officers and Polk County sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene. Eastbound lanes of the Polk Parkway remained open as of 1 p.m., but LPD said the lanes would soon be closed so that the plane could be loaded onto a trailer and removed. The plane landed about a mile from Lakeland Linder International Airport, where the Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo is taking place. It was not immediately clear whether the plane had taken off from Lakeland Linder.

Bill Scott, Brooksville, 1946 Cessna 120 Bill Scott, of Pilots Country in Brooksville, has been attending the expo for 48 years — That's right, longer than the event has been named.  Scott said he remembers the first Sun 'n Fun, where a substantially smaller crowd gathered around hangars on the north side of the airport to look at planes. "You start off coming to look at airplanes some," he said. "Then you see people, get to know people and keep coming back to see how everyone is doing." Scott flew in his 1946 Cessna 120 single-engine light aircraft that was mass-produced immediately f...