The Fanblade

The last flying Avro Vulcan at RIAT Fairford 2009

I am at present acting as managing editor of Regional International, the journal of the European Regions Airline Association (ERA), so have little time to post to the Fanblade blog let along keep up with the defence side of aerospace. However I did go to Fairford yesterday (Saturday), the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) which thankfully was not rained off despite heavy downpours on Friday. Last year it was cancelled due to rain and I suspect this affected attendance a little, along with the recession, although it became very full around 3-4pm. The Avro Vulcan was the star of the show as it was at Farnborough last year, while the 100th anniversary of Naval aviation fly-past was impressive. Tickets were not cheap at £40 a head (with, commendably, U16s free) although as media I side-stepped that – however media facilities were very thin on the ground and we had complimentary tickets for the Saturday (or Sunday) rather than a press pass. It may be designed to stop media exploiting the system and actually going for a family day out, but you couldn’t help feeling that the profile of the event will suffer for it. They need to be seen to be putting on the world’s biggest military air show. It is in the middle of nowhere so making an effort to get media coverage is a real job with real benefits. In addition, the Friday used to be a press day where the media would get a chance to speak with industry and air force leaders, but that was not the case this year. An opportunity lost? There were some big banner adverts with BAE Systems having te greatest presence, as you would expect, but the US military command kept its head down despite a good turnout of aircraft (from B-1 to B-52). Some notable absences among European military ranks were reportedly due to cost-cutting (e.g. French). Then there was the odd inexplicable banner, e.g. from NATS (the UK’s air traffic control organisaton). How many of the crowd would actually have notices the NATS banner and among those few people how many would actually know what NATS was? My conclusion: It was RIAT but not as we know it… a little subduued but strangely busy later in the day. One good thing – the usual multi-hour traffic queues were not so bad, I hear (I took the precaution of staying near the airfield overnight!)