AVIATION-SHOTS   

After last year's cancellation, the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) 2009 at RAF Fairford, had a much better weather on Saturday and despite the rain on Sunday the organisers managed to keep the air display going on without any gaps. The result was a sell-out crowd with 160,000 people attending to see the 269 aircraft that took part from 33 Air Arms, representing 22 nations. This year themes were 'Sea Search '09' and 'NATO 60th Anniversary' and to celebrate 100 years of naval aviation the Royal Navy assembled a large Balbo of their helicopters and fixed-wing aircrafts: it was one of the highlights of RIAT 2009!

Unfortunately there were no U.S. fighters in the flying display, but all the RAF assets (Red Arrows, Typhoon etc) as well as the French Rafale, the Spanish EF-18A Hornet, the Swedish JAS39C Gripen, Dutch F-16AM Falcon in its new colour scheme, Swiss F/A-18C Hornet, Hungarian JAS39C Gripen , Finnish F-18C Hornet and the excellent Italian Frecce Tricolori (and many other displays…) gave the crowd 7 hours of great entertainment!
One of the main stars of the show, which many had come to see, was the Vulcan B2 XH-558 which was also parked on the base for the people to have a closer look…it performed the show that everyone wanted to see ,and its displays on both Saturday and Sunday were really appreciated with great excitement!!