Another year, another RIAT!! Once again, I journeyed along with tens of thousands of other aviation enthusiasts and the general public to the annual Royal International Air Tattoo held in July at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England.
As usual, I joined FRIAT (Friends of the Royal International Air Tattoo), which, as well as providing access to the Park and View areas on the preceding Wednesday and Thursday of the show, also has a reserved grandstand seat for the 3 show days and the Monday departure day.
The RIAT organising team once again managed to get some very nice participants, in particular the Pakistan Air Force, with the two examples of the PAC JF-17C Thunder, accompanied by an Illyushin Il-78MP Midas tanker and a Lockheed C-130H Hercules in a special colour scheme.
Another star of the show was an Antonov An-74T Coaler of the Egyptian Air Force in a desert colour scheme. The Egyptian Air Force was the 59th air arm to participate in RIAT, a truly excellent record, especially given the tensions around the globe at this time and operational commitments.
The weather didn’t always play ball, with some showers on most days, but these did mean that the moisture in the atmosphere made for some impressive ‘fluffy’ flyby’s.
The first Boeing E-7 Wedgetail performed a formation flypast with the Red Arrows and also carried out a touch-and-go on the Saturday.
Amongst the other notable visitors was the French Air and Space Force Boeing E-3F on static display and a rare flying display by a French Navy Breguet Br.1150 Altantique 2.
The planned flying participation by a North American Rockwell B-1B Lancer didn’t happen, due to technical issues with the aircraft – it was, however, towed over to the static display in place of 2nd example which had ‘gone tech’ before leaving the USA.
Fast jet displays also abounded, including Eurofighter EF2000s from the Spanish Air Force, one of which sported a brightly coloured Tiger colour scheme, as well as the last appearance of a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon from the Royal Danish Air Force.
There are numerous other participants, some of which you can see in my images below – if I listed them all, this page would be far too long!!
This year, I used the opportunity to experiment with slower shutter speeds to provide something different in my images. It didn’t work every time, but it has given a good grounding for future attempts.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the Polish Air Force F-16 Tiger Demo display, performed by Pilot Major Maciej ‘Slab’ Krakowian, who sadly died the following month whilst rehearsing for an airshow in Radom in Poland. His display at RIAT had earned his team the ‘As The Crow Flies’ trophy for the “best overall flying demonstration”. Blue Skies, Major.
