B52 Paul Morrison

1st June

  • 1st Jun 2023

We start this week with the return of a display team not seen in the UK since 2012! We are pleased that the Fursan Al Emarat display team, from the United Arab Emirates will be joining us at RIAT 2023. The team will be flying a sevenship of colourful MB-339 jets for an impressive flying display routine on Saturday & Sunday.

Next, we can now announce that the United States Air Force plans to send a pair of B-52 to RIAT 2023. One jet will be on static display on all three days, whilst visitors over the weekend will also get the chance to see the mighty BUFF in the air! Both jets will come from the 2nd Bomb Wing, based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. We hope to announce additional assets from the USAF in the coming weeks... watch this space!

Another cold war jet which will be one of the stars of the static display for aviation enthusiasts will be the Sukhoi Su-22, coming from the Polish Air Force. This may be one of the final opportunities to see soviet produced fast jet aircraft at an Air Tattoo, so is not to be missed! The deployment of the Fitter will be supported by a CASA support aircraft, although we do not yet know if this will remain at Fairford over the weekend to join the static aircraft displays.

Finally, one additional civilian aircraft for the static displays this week, with the unique SAAB 340 'National Flying Laboratory Centre' operated by Cranfield University, making it's RIAT Debut.

This week we were informed by the Turkish Air Force, that unfortunately due to the ongoing workload on their Air Transport Fleet in earthquake relief missions, the required level of support to deploy the Turkish Stars to RIAT will not be available and therefore their participation has been cancelled. We are awaiting news if any alternative aircraft may be available but recognise the high tempo of operations for the Turkish military in recovering from the devastating natural disaster earlier this year may make this difficult.

This week our team have continued to work with a number of other Air Forces as the show gets closer to finalise their participation arrangements, which includes participants for the flying display and static displays.