Thrills on a Higher Plane : Point Mugu: Daredevils at the air show send a crowd of 30,000 for a loop. The lower turnout is blamed on a lack of big-name flyers.

Weekdays, Joann Osterud shuttles commuters out of Los Angeles in a United Airlines 727. But on Saturday, the stunt flyer from Oxnard traded in her big wings for a 2-by-5-foot cockpit, smoke trails, somersaults and vertical twists.

“It’s like driving a fine limousine during the week and driving a dirt bike during the weekends,” said Osterud, one of six performers looping and diving for an estimated 30,000 people at the 28th annual Point Mugu Air Show this weekend.

Precision flyers, wing walkers and parachutists performed Saturday. Flight performances and aircraft displays will continue Sunday until 4:30 p.m.

Organizers, who had expected more than 55,000 people each day, attributed the lower turnout to the lack of big-name stunt flyers, such as the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds.

A few in the crowd expressed disappointment that the U.S. Navy’s precision flight demonstration team did not attend.

“It’d be real nice if the Blue Angels were here,” said Richard Bebo, a Vietnam veteran who has attended the air show since 1967. He said the group puts on a show with precision and finesse.

But most seemed content with Osterud’s outside loop, in which she flies the plane in a huge circle, sitting on the outside so she’s upside down for most of the trick. The crowd also applauded her lomchevaks --a Czechoslovakian word for headache--in which she tumbles the plane nose over tail.

Osterud, 43, began flying almost 20 years ago, a self-described white-knuckle pilot, afraid of even routine flights. But when one of her calmer instructors took her out for an aerobatics lesson, it only took one loop to hook her, she said.

“You could turn the world upside down, shake the cobwebs loose and it was like the airplane was a part of you,” she said. Besides, she added, stunt flying proved to be more fun “than motoring off to have coffee at some airport for the umpteenth time.”

The eight-year resident of Ventura County believes that she is one of only six women stunt pilots in the country.

Osterud and many of the other performers flew to New Age piano music blasting through the speakers. The precision flying of Team America, in which three single-wing planes flew at each other’s wingtips and then diverged out in a heart formation, was applauded by the crowd. And many gasped at a woman balancing on a looping biplane.

“I know one thing, I wouldn’t trust it,” said Terry Hopper of Thousand Oaks, peering at a wing walker through his binoculars.

People filled the bleachers while others spread blankets on the concrete and let their children play with toy planes and scramble for signatures from parachutists.

Ken Suliga of Simi Valley stood with his 1 1/2-year-old son on his shoulders admiring the military aircraft.

“We pay enough money for it. We might as well enjoy it,” Suliga said.