Florennes Airshow
The Florennes Air Show 2012, coinciding with the 70 years of military aviation at Florennes, promissed to become the biggest military airshow on the European continent. Planned in the middle of June the weather unfortunately did not play completely ball, but the flying program promissed many highlights.
Where? Florennes, Belgium
When? 23-24/06/2012
In the morning some warbirds such as a Fieseler Storch, Trojan, T-6 or the MS406. However they were flown far away from the crowdline, and as I have seen most of them just recently at La Ferté I decided not to take any photos of them.
In the afternoon it got more interesting and a 6-ship formation of Belgian Alpha Jets opened the 'military' part of the show. After a first fly-by with trailing smoke in the Belgian national colours they did some more passes before flying back to their homebase. Very interesting was the formation of the Belgian Solo Demo F-16 and a Spitfire, representing the past and present of the Belgian Air Forces (which now became the Belgian Air Component as part of the Armed Forces).
Bringing the real highlight a bit forward here is already the Su-22 demo team of the Polish Air Force. Somehow brought up this year their appearance came as a real surprise and though they did not focus on tight circles and could not compete with the other afterburner-powered jets, seeing these two Warsaw Pact warriors in the air and even shooting flares was a sight not to forget!
Four F-16s were on the list of flying displays for that day. The second in line after the host was "Solo Turk" of the Turkish Air Force. Of course also the Dutch Demo team did perform, and last but not least was "Zeus" – the HAF F-16 Demo – at the end of the day. However the sun was gone at that time of the day and I decided for an early departure, so there are no photos of this one either.
A colurfull spot was the Belgian Sea King rescue demo. Unfortunately its counterpart from the Army was flying under a cloudy sky and the striking, but dark scheme was quite difficult to appreciate without sunshine.
From Switzerland there was the PC-7 Team and the F-18 Solo Demo present. Both used the chance to give a fly-by in formation before splitting up and presenting thei individual displays.
My last photo of the day was one of the Slovak MiG-29 after its flying display. Furthermore the show did feature the Belgian "Red Devils", Croatian "Wings of Storm", French "Patrouille de France", the Royal Jordanian Falcons and the Cartouche Dore, but I was not very keen on taking photos of Display teams that team.
After all, it was a great show with many Tiger aircraft from the recent Orland Tiger Meet in the static display, but the far distance of the runway – and thus also the flying displays – did somehow spoil the photographic pleasure of the event. If you want to go there to take som nice photos, enjoy the well organized Spotterdays before and after the show days!
