REVIEW: Bournemouth Air Festival – Airshow dates, news and reviews for UK & Europe

The return of the Bournemouth Air Festival was another important moment for the UK air show community. It was the first major seaside airshow to return to full form, attracting 800,000 spectators over four days. As such, it has enjoyed superb support from the British Armed Forces with large ground displays supporting the flight demonstrations. It was not without incident, however, with one of the AeroSuperBatics Wingwalkers’ Boeing Stearmans conducting a controlled water landing in Poole Harbor on Saturday, luckily without serious injury to the pilot and wingwalker.

Paul Johnson / Flightline UK reports. All the author’s photographs.

Bournemouth’s return is something I have been looking forward to all season. Bournemouth is always a superb destination for a short break and the Festival of the Air only enhances that with superb in-flight and ground entertainment. For the 2021 tourist season, Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP) has been very proactive with plans to restart its tourism industry with the “Festival Coast Live” project at its heart. The Coast Live festival culminated with the Air Festival which alone is estimated at £ 30million to the local economy each year and this year extended the summer season until the first week of the school period.

New for 2021 was a large STEM exhibit on the East Overcliff with a number of attendees from the aerospace and engineering industry. The STEM exhibit complimented the usual villages hosted by the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force across the huge festival site that stretches from Bournemouth to Boscombe Pier. Other traditions of the Festival of the Air included the Royal Marines performing the ‘Beating the Retreat’ and huge fireworks from Bournemouth Pier. Another unique part of the Air Festival was the Sunseeker parade on Saturday. Sunseeker is a local business and celebrated its history by bringing together 50 of its ships through their history for the parade on Bournemouth beach.

Unsurprisingly, the flight was a bit smaller than usual due to various factors. Although there was superb support from the armed forces during the four days, civilian acts were slightly lower than in previous years and for the most part the planned flight demonstrations were very similar during each of the four days and three nights. . It was different from previous years where postings piled up on Thursdays and Fridays to become much larger displays on weekends. This build-up and expectation to see something different the next day was definitely something that I missed this year. Another big blow was the belated cancellation of the Belgian Air Force A109 display, which would have been a great addition to the Night Air display – hope they can return in the years to to come.

Saturday’s flight was also cut short due to technical issues encountered by one of the AeroSuperBatics Wingwalkers Boeing Stearmans during their presentation. The team immediately ended their demonstration, but the lead aircraft was unable to maintain altitude and was eventually forced to land in Poole Harbor. It was a great relief to hear that pilot Dave Barrell and winged walker Kirsten Pobjoy were able to escape their affected plane with minor injuries and were quickly picked up by a local family who were sailing nearby in their small boat. The incident was met with a swift response from the Coast Guard, RNLI and emergency services. However, flights were unable to resume for the rest of the day as much of the Air Festival organization and support agencies were busy in response to the incident.

The AeroSuperBatics Wingwalkers had opened the Air Festival on Thursday and led a small but selected group of civilian airshow favorites. These included The blades who played at each Festival de l’Air, Rich Goodwin and his incredible acrobatic antics in Pitts S-2S Special G-JPIT plus Rod Dean at the controls of the Slingsby firefly. The Fireflies aerobatic team also returned by performing daytime and nighttime displays. The team have become the Air Festival favorites, especially with their spectacular fireworks displays as part of Night Air and for 2021 Jon Gowdy, Andy Durston, Nigel Ried and John Dodd have shared the honors of piloting the pair. of RV4s over the four days.

While there weren’t any classic jets in the display, there were some pretty good warbird displays. The Rolls Royce Heritage Flight contributed both his beautiful Supermarine Spitfire PRXIX and North American Mustang P-51D over the four days. But perhaps the landmark exhibition of the Festival de l’Air was once again the Ultimate fighters team driving the Republic P-47D Thunderbolt ‘Nellie-B ‘, North America TF-51D Mustang ‘Unlike Marie ‘, Supermarine Spitfire Vc EE602 and Hispano HA1112-M1L Buchon ‘White 9.’ On Friday, the team also resumed joint training with other residents of Sywell, The blades, last seen on the closing day of the Festival de l’Air in 2019.

The three armed forces were represented in the flight demonstrations during the four days. The Tiger Army Free Fall Parachute Demonstration Team are longtime supporters of the Festival de l’Air and in 2021 they performed during both day and night shows. The latter saw the team donning light packs and pyrotechnics for eye-catching arrivals in the seaside arena. The Royal Navy was represented by the solo Leonardo Wildcat HMA2 piloted by Lieutenant Ryan Wotton. The lack of air shows has meant the team has waited long enough for the start of their poster season, with Bournemouth being just one of the few full public appearances in 2021.

The Royal Air Force made the biggest contribution to the show. The Red arrows headlining their contingent posting the four days despite very foggy conditions over the weekend. Squadron Leader Tom Bould, Red 1 Team Leader, said: “Four fabulous days of exhibitions in front of brilliant crowds; truly a highlight for the Red Arrows with a coastline providing the perfect arena to display the best of the Brits.Likewise, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight appeared on the four days with the Douglas Dakota III, Supermarine Spitfire IX and Hawker Hurricane IIc.

The RAF Chinook HC6A The demo team made one of their very few public appearances on the UK mainland at the Air Festival, Friday through Sunday. Due to the lack of other events, the team’s Public Display Authority was only awarded a few weeks before Bournemouth and the team mainly supported the RAF Family Day events. As always, the Chinook is an impressive performer showing impressive agility for such a tall guy and bringing a bit of “bladeslap” to the festivities.

The Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 made an even greater contribution by stealing three daytime displays and two nighttime displays. These, unfortunately only flown with a standard gray jet, were truly impressive, lighting up the twilight with the luminous warming of the EJ200 turbojets. Flight Lieutenant James Sainty, Typhoon demonstration pilot, said of his appearance at the Air Festival: “The Bournemouth exhibition space is phenomenal. It is a real privilege and an honor to display the Union flag colored jet in front of the crowd here, an absolute pleasure to see all the faces looking up and the cameras flashing. I look forward to next year. thank you for your hospitality. “

There is no doubt that the return of the Bournemouth Air Festival has been very important to the airshow community and will hopefully pave the way for other events to return in 2022. It has not only proven that great seaside events free can be safely organized in the new ‘COVID-World’, the Air Festival has proven that large air shows remain highly regarded by the public. A tremendous amount of work from the BCP Council, some of which was completed just weeks before the event, made the Festival de l’Air as safe and enjoyable as possible.

Jon Weaver, director of the Air Festival since its inception in 2008, said: “I am overwhelmed by the immense amount of hard work that has gone into delivering these fantastic four days of breathtaking entertainment. We’ve had an almighty year trying to pull this together, with the many restrictions we had to work through and the hoops we often had to go through, to make sure this event could happen and I’m so happy we have it. have done so.

“I want to thank every member of the staff: from the events team who have worked tirelessly for months to the rangers who know the waterfront like their backs; to the emergency services for their support, to the various colleagues within the BCP Council services, to the stakeholders for joining us, to the Ministry of Defense and to all those who made this event possible.

Bournemouth Air Festival will return in 2022 on the weekend of 1^st-4^e September.