If you read some of what was written before, during and subsequent to last year's Waddington International Airshow, no one would blame you for perhaps being slightly dubious upon being told that the event was among the most successful in 2009. But it was, despite the Vulcan debacle where a paperwork issue saw the aircraft grounded for the show weekend and also a lack of true military frontline fast jet participation - with the RAF's Typhoon solo providing the only afterburners to illuminate the blue Lincolnshire skies.
Waddington is a huge family event and there can be little doubt that it does much to promote the work of the Royal Air Force and also to raise funds for the airshow's chosen charities. Many enthusiasts however remain sceptical, citing, quite fairly, the lack of foreign participation in 2009 and, rather more unfairly, comparing last year's event with those of years gone by. (See our recent airshow retrospective for more detail on why comparisons are so unfair).
It's a subject the team behind the airshow is all too aware of and one we will cover in depth during our meeting to talk through plans for this year's event. It wasn't however the only area in which the team knew they had to improve this year, with traffic problems blighting the event for many in 2009. Waddington is far from alone in suffering from this kind of congestion, but as Airshow Director Colin Reeves OBE explains, they are taking radical action to try and alleviate the problem this year.
"You have to change the show year on year and try to learn the lessons of any mistakes that were made, and one of our biggest problems last year was the traffic situation.
"We'd love to have a bypass built like Silverstone has but, as with many other shows, Fairford being a notable example, the rural roads around us are not built to deal with that kind of traffic. But we've been working closely with the police since last year's show and in many ways have gone back to basics.
"What we've done is look at all the routes in to Waddington and primarily we want to keep people on specific routes (this time avoiding Lincoln's traffic) and will be encouraging people to stay on those routes, not use their sat-navs to try and find short cuts as that creates more problems. Secondly we have doubled the number of pay points to get people in the show faster, also opening two extra gates in the morning and the evening. National Blue Badge Holders will no longer have to route through a specific gate and will be able to enter via any gate, we will then re-route them internally. It's the same with coaches and we will now have a north and south coach park which should help. Other traffic routes will be segregated by direction to ensure a smoother traffic flow.
"There will be queues though and we're never going to completely get away from that, but hopefully things will improve and we'll keep them to a minimum, getting people on and off the airfield as quickly as we can."
Before we move on the specifics of attracting participants to the show, it is useful to note the other main issue which the organisers sitting before us faced with last year's event - the Vulcan.
"After the traffic problems, where we gave people the chance to attend on the Sunday or get a full refund, the other issue was the Vulcan. The team here worked incredibly hard to promote the Vulcan's appearance and such like so it was, (pause), disappointing to learn on the Friday night that they didn't have a permit to fly," says Colin.
"That disappointment wasn't merely because the permit hadn't come through; we had been given no advance warning that there was even any potential problem. If we had known then we could have told the public that there was a chance the aircraft wouldn't fly and we spoke with TVOC after the show and told them, quite forcefully, about the way they conducted their business over the show weekend. We all want to see the Vulcan back on the circuit and we would love to see it back at Waddington but we would hope that the management would be more open with people over potential issues. We took a hammering over it, even being accused of lying about knowing it wasn't going to fly, but I think it did them as much damage to be honest."
A footnote here that Colin received a grand total of 70 letters of complaint following the 2009 show, all of which he has replied to personally, and hopefully this fact will quieten those who said that tens of thousands of show attendees complained about what had taken place.
Moving on to the 2010 show then, it is one focussing on three strong themes, notably the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, itself a theme which comes with certain pressures and expectations of how it will be commemorated at shows this summer.
"We've thought long and hard about how to mark this anniversary and spoken to lots of people to gauge opinion, finally deciding to try and recreate a World War II airfield attack and follow that through. We obviously can't get German bombers so we'll be using visual effects and pyrotechnics and hopefully be using archive footage on the big screens to set the scene, along with suitable audio over the PA system and also re-enactment groups within the crowd."
It's relatively early days as yet, but with the mock airfield attack, ensuing dogfights, Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and then a fly past of representative aircraft, the commemoration, which will probably last around 45 minutes and is currently scheduled for the morning of each show day, should be an impressive one.
Waddington 2010 also marks 90 years (to the exact day on 3rd July) since the first RAF airshow at Hendon. Archive material will also be utilised here and I think many people will be amazed when they see the format of those early shows - imagine a role demo, with weapons! Unfortunately a recreation of those elements is out of the question in 2010 but again, representative aircraft from World War I through to the present day will flypast to mark this important anniversary and some relevant solo and team displays will be included within this notable commemoration.
The final theme is one relating directly to the home team at Waddington - 35 years since the entry in to service of the E-3 and 25 years of E-3 service in the RAF. This will be very much a station effort and should result in a fascinating spread of AEW (Airborne Early Warning) aircraft from Europe and possibly beyond.
And what of the much talked about foreign fast jet participation? This is the missing element which drew most criticism from the enthusiast community last year and, reading through some of the comments being posted on the forums, scepticism remains.
"We are trying very hard to secure foreign fast jet participation for this year's show and have been pushing the embassies quite aggressively to try and get the aircraft to come to the event," says Colin.
"We hope over the next few months that this work will come to fruition."
But what sort of environment is the Waddington team, and indeed any airshow team, working within to try and attract the kind of participation we're talking about? It's something we touched upon in our aforementioned retrospective a few weeks ago, but it does no harm to hear it from someone involved at the sharp end.
"There are a couple of things really. The number of aircraft types available has reduced dramatically with some air forces already down to one or two main types, so the days of having five or six different fast jets from one air force are long gone. The economic and financial pressures on all of the air forces around the world make it harder to get them over; they look very closely at the cost and benefits of making the journey to any show.
"We have a further problem that I think the general public just don't realise. The three main RAF shows (Waddington, Cosford and Leuchars) operate on a reciprocal arrangement, so foreign air forces send us aircraft for events and we send them aircraft by way of return. The commercial shows, such as RIAT, do not operate under the same agreement and therefore the same difficulty, and it is a difficulty, but it is something we have to live with.
"The RAF is cutting back and I think you might be able to count on one hand how many overseas shows the RAF supports this year."
Waddington therefore has to try and work with other nations on the basis that we (the RAF) won't be able to reciprocate and Colin makes a point of stressing just how important the support of the Station Commander is in this respect, helping with static aircraft from the Waddington fleet if at all possible. Leuchars works in a similar way and for Cosford of course this is an insurmountable problem as it is a non-flying station.
This is also the reason why shows are now working so closely together to try and offer foreign nations a package to make their visit worthwhile. Don't come all this way for just one UK airshow - come over and do three or four. This isn't the first time UK shows have collaborated in this way; it started in earnest a couple of years ago, but 2010 will see the most concentrated group action.
"This year there is a major push. Biggin Hill deliberately moved to be within a week of our show for example but they of course can have a problem with the length of their runway, so we will help wherever possible and aircraft could display at Biggin while remaining based at Waddington. That's the sort of thing we are looking at."
To what extent is the Battle of Britain anniversary helping with securing foreign participation I ask?
"All of the nations involved have been approached and this of course is probably one of the last chances to commemorate the event with any number of veterans. We've had a positive response from the military side of things and, as often happens, are now waiting on political decisions."
While the airshow is forced to play a waiting game on military participation, it did look at one stage as if there might be more than seven hours flying at this year's event and, waiting game not withstanding, civilian acts have already been booked to ensure a full display, which sounds like a sensible move bearing in mind the uncertainties that still surround aircraft from abroad. A number of civilian acts have also been put on standby as military acts will take priority.
Clearly we cannot ignore the announcement and subsequent furore that followed the show's admission that they are working to try and secure a visit from the Royal Australian Air Force in the shape of an F-111. Do Colin and his team accept that perhaps it is slightly disingenuous to announce that an act of this stature 'might' be appearing?
"I do appreciate that but we could put a photo of any aircraft on the site or we could simply just add an image of a Waddington based aircraft and leave it at that. I do understand that the opportunity to use the F-111 image has created a lot of comment but we always ask the Australians to come and when we spoke to them last year we received a much more positive response with regard to the possibilities of attending in 2010.
"It had been declared that there would be no F-111 displays at all this year but already we see the aircraft performing in Singapore and the Australian Air Force is keen to give the F-111 a send off after 40 years of service. We are still waiting to hear, and I think that issue is not providing the F-111 itself but probably the support and transport needs of the aircraft, but we have a greater chance this year than we've had in the last five years or so.
"We do recognise that we get criticised for saying that we are asking questions and trying to secure certain things, but equally we get criticised if we say nothing!"
We should know more about the F-111 in the next four weeks or so and Colin's promise is that once the Office has a definitive answer then it will be announced; you can't ask for much more than that so perhaps a collective crossing of fingers might work over that time - spread the word!
The success of Waddington's 2010 show will not rest however on the appearance of the F-111 alone, although one can only imagine the influx of enthusiasts if we do get to see the mighty Aardvark in the UK skies once more. Looking at the whiteboard in the airshow office Karl and I are genuinely delighted to see the kind of acts the airshow team are currently talking to. It would be wholly unfair at this stage to spill the beans but I do think it's fair to say that if some of what we saw on the list is confirmed (and some discussions are seriously advanced) that this will be the best Waddington show for many years.
With Colin disappearing to attend another meeting we're left at this point in the safe hands of David Thomas (of Vulcan and BBMF fame) and Charles Skiera, David's deputy, who thus far have sat quietly and let the boss do the talking. It's interesting however to get another perspective on how the display comes together.
"I think it starts as soon as the airshow finishes," says David.
"We remain open minded and look at what worked, analysing who did well and what will fit with the themes we have. I think you inevitably end up with favourites but it's not easy as every airshow is feeling the pinch."
The question remains though - unless you ask each and every one of them, how do you know what it is exactly that 170,000 people have actually enjoyed?
"We hold a big 'wash-up' meeting a day or two after the event and we analyse each and every one of the displays. We ask what everyone liked and we also look online at the photography. That's a good way to gauge popularity as the most popular acts are those which end up being photographed the most" Charles answers.
"You have to maintain a balance," says David.
"People want the bangs and noise that fast jet displays provide, but equally, you don't want too many displays of that nature and you need to ensure that the display programme covers the full range of acts."
It is also important to note that David adds an addendum to what Colin told us earlier about reciprocal agreements with foreign air arms.
"The Air Show Office certainly cannot afford to pay for overseas military aircraft to come to display at Waddington although we can meet some costs when they are here. Historically, we have operated on a recipricol arrangement where we send you our display aircraft and you send us yours. Today's World situation requires our military forces to be fully occupied in other conflicts and we just do not have the capacity to maintain the effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of our Forces back home in the form of mounting an air show.
I do hope that readers take on board some of what we learned at Waddington in the couple of hours we spent with the airshow team. This is not about making excuses or simply putting barriers up to explain why there has been a lack of foreign participation; it is about revealing more of the difficulties facing Waddington, and many other airshows, in this regard. I also hope some of the detractors will hold fire and give the airshow team a chance to deliver the show they are really hoping to. Waddington has a real chance to return as a stand out show this year, for enthusiasts as well as the ever keen general public, and we'll be back for a further preview nearer the time.
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2010-02-16 - Peter Fleetwood
Thanks for this, Gareth (and Karl).
I hope the logistics people really can sort out traffic problems, which are a menace around Lincoln. What the article really does get across is the difference between vociferous complaints and representative ones (only 70 leters is- in my book - a very positive sign). I think most of us are resigned to the volatility of military commitments, and your report makes it crystal clear that the reciprocal visit is the backbone of foreign participation in the shows mentioned, so that is already a very hopeful "ingredient". We can all hope and hope, but I think that, on balance, we have not done badly recently against a very challenging geopolitical scene.
Well put together, both words and pictures. Many thanks.
Peter
2010-02-16 - Gareth Stringer
Hi Gary
Thanks for the comment.
Taken from the airshow website and confirmed by the team:
"35 Years of Airborne Early Warning (AEW)
It is 35 years since the introduction into service of the E3 aircraft and 20 years of RAF E3-D Sentry operations. We are planning an AEW bonanza with representatives of AEW operators from across the globe exhibiting their aircraft in an amazing static display."
I can only assume that the E-3 folk are using 1990 as a benchmark - either that or it should read that they are in their 20th year!
Cheers
Gareth
2010-02-16 - Gary Parsons
Only 19 years for the E-3 in RAF service - 1991 (I remember it well!).
Cheers!
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