2025 In Airshows

2025 was another fantastic year in the airshow-world. I was lucky enough to get to loads of shows this year and two London flypasts. It was definitely a year for helicopters with the RAF Chinook & Army Attack Helicopter role demos appearing at both Duxford & RIAT and lots of foreign displays at RIAT from the Portuguese Merlin, Czech Sokols, German NH90 and Belgian NH90 at Duxford's Battle Of Britain Show. So without further ado these are my highlights of the 2025 season.  

My first aviation event of the year came nice and early with the VE Day 80 flypast in London.

My first meeting this year with the Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight Lancaster

The Red Arrows in formation with 4 Typhoons

My season started to busy up in June with the Trooping The Colour Flypast & Duxford Summer Airshow

Some photos from Trooping The Colour -

Globemaster & F35s

Voyager & Typhoons

Typhoons

The Red Arrows

This is the full flypast -

Duxford's Summer Airshow carried on with the VE Day theme with the appearance of R4D 'Ready for Duty' and it's team who had flown over from Texas.

The show was also my first appointment of the year with the RAF Typhoon Display. This year's display could only be described as thunderous. From it's new arrival from crowd rear into multiple barrel roles to it's exit via an inverted climb you really didn't get a chance to catch your breath. The team went on to win the 'Best Solo Jet Display' at RIAT and it was easy to see why.

Duxford also started the helicopter theme for the season with the appearance of a Cobra which I'd never seen before. 

I also got a nice close up view of the RAF Chinook Role Demo from the members area. The commentary this season was absolutely hilarious, I really hope they make it to more shows next year purely for the commentary alone!

Duxford was also the debut for the Army's Attack Helicopter Display Team featuring a Wildcat and 2 Apaches. It was absolutely fantastic and they also performed at RIAT with extra pyro!

These are some more highlights from the show -

Next up in July was the big one .... RIAT 

There was some slightly challenging weather in the vein of 2023's Monsoon Fairford and I did spend a lot of the mornings hiding from the rain ...

As always there were some beautifully painted aircraft.

Jordanian Hercules

German Typhoon

Hunter

Friday was the best weather with blue skies and sunshine all day. 

The SAAB Gripen kicking off the show

The Finnish F18 was one of the standout acts of the weekend.

A 'Friday exclusive' RAF F35 in the hover

The Red Arrows closed the show on the Friday.

They also flew with an RAF Poseidon later in the weekend. 

 I also got up close to them taking off. 

This was Friday -

One of the poignant memories of the weekend was the Polish F16 and it's brilliant display. Tragically the pilot was killed just weeks later at a show in Poland. 

A highlight 'from the ground' was finally seeing a massive C5 Galaxy up close and also getting to go onboard and walk through. 

I couldn't zoom out enough on my phone camera to fit it all in 😂

The Frecce Tricolori made their first appearance for a couple of years-

The Frecce's history was also reflected by the pairing of a vintage G91 'Gina' and a T91 Master which is the aircraft the team will be transitioning to. 

I mentioned earlier that this was the season of helicopters and RIAT contributed to this with the aforementioned German NH90, Portuguese  Merlin and Czech Sokol demonstrations. 

Merlin

Sokol

NH90

A demonstration from one of the Fairford-based U2 spy planes

A surprising favourite display of mine was this graceful French Navy Atlantique. 

RIAT said a sad goodbye to the beautifully painted Danish F16 which was due for retirement at the end of the season .

Saturday's highlights -

Sunday's highlights -

The last of the 'summer' shows was an astonishingly sunny Airbourne! We had pretty good weather in 2022 but this year was exceptional. 

The absolute highlight of my year is the moment the Red Arrows shoot over the beach into their display. 

Diamond 9

I waited all season to get this shot!

On Thursday and Friday we were treated to the sight of an RAF A400M flying low along the seafront. 

Thursday's highlights -

Another standout moment of the 4 days was the BBMF and the Lancaster's departure over the crowd. An absolute wow moment as it's 4 Merlins thundered over the town. 

Heading in over the crowd

Continuing with the warbird theme P51 Mustang 'Moonbeam McSwine' made her Airbourne debut. 

I promised it was a helicopter-themed season and Airbourne carried it on with the Royal Navy's Black Cats display team performing all 4 days with their Wildcat pair. 

The blue skies made for some great photographs over the weekend. 

Rich Goodwin's Pitts

Jet Provorst

Rolls Royce Spitfire

The noisiest participant of the weekend was of course the Typhoon -

Even Easyjet stop for the Typhoon

Highlights from the other days -

As Autumn approached it was time to head to Duxford for their Battle Of Britain Airshow . They finished up the unofficial helicopter theme of the season with the Belgian Air Force's NH90 Search & Rescue Demonstration.

I'd never seen an AN26 Invader before until I met Sweet Eloise -

One of the highlights of the show was a record 8 Hurricanes in formation -

I hadn't seen a Sabre in years so I was really excited when it was announced that this Mistral Warbirds example would be attending. 

My final sight of the BBMF Lancaster before she goes into maintenance for 2 years

This is one of my favourite photos of the season - the Lancaster performing whilst the Spitfires taxi for the finale flypast

The show was of course finished by the mass Spitfire & Hurricane flypast.

Highlights from the Battle Of Britain show -

The final show of my season was Duxford's Flying Finale which was unfortunately weather affected by an incredibly strong wind. This put paid to the BBMF and smaller warbirds. The Duxford-based Catalina put on a valiant display.

Thankfully the wind dropped a little towards the end of the afternoon and I was able to see the Typhoon and Red Arrows one final time. 

Highlights from the show -

You can watch my highlights of 2025 season here (you may want to make a cuppa as it's quite a long one). 

I'm really excited for the 2026 season; Airbourne has already announced it will be returning (thank you for all your donations everyone) and RIAT has announced that the 2026 theme is 'Fighter Meet' which is bound to be noisy 😁😁😁

Love Jen

XxxX

Where are you Christmas?

Obviously I need to include a cute Christmas photo of Eos!

So as many of you know I am the Grinch incarnate when it comes to Christmas (also I must say I'm loving the Grinch meal at Macca D's 😆) but believe it or not it hasn't always been this way! 

When I was a little kid I was ridiculously excited and absorbed by the magic of the festive season (Dad will confirm there was that Christmas eve when I wouldn't go to sleep until 5am), even as I got older and into my teens I still loved it - even working in retail whilst I was at college didn't dim it for me.

I think it all changed when my depression  started properly around the Autumn of 2025 that coupled with some New Years Eves'  witnessing some quite awful domestic abuse of someone I knew at the time (I won't go into details as it's not my story to tell but I hope they're healed and happy now). New Year's Eve being something I'm even more Grinchy about believe it or not. 

Suddenly Christmas lost it's sparkle and was a day where joy directly contrasted the pit I was in. Not helped by losing two of my dearest friends Nat in 2008 and Kay in 2016 right before Christmas. I started putting up a barrier between myself and the festive season, even going as far as the great Christmas tree take down on Christmas Day of 2013 😆.

Whilst I know there's no way of matching the Christmases of my youth, Christmas Eve in the pub and family Boxing Day gatherings are long gone but I wish I could still feel that same joy.

There were some Christmas highlights over the years - Eos & Norman's first Christmas together when they played all day and of course Mum's and my trips to the Christmas markets in Vienna in 2019 and 2023. Of course last Christmas and this year are difficult since Mum passed away especially as she was the one in our household who loved Christmas. Whereas Dad and I live up to the Scrooge narrative. 

I guess I'm afraid of putting my energy into Christmas and repeating other year's depression. I want to decorate my room, listen to Christmas songs, watch Christmas films, judge inferior Christmas markets, look at Christmas displays and be excited for the big day and revel in the joy that I used to feel. I want to enjoy New Year's Eve again and go out and socialise rather than going to bed at 10 and being cross when the midnight fireworks wake me up.

I guess to quote Cindy Lou Who "Where are you Christmas?" And can I get you back?

Love Jen

XXXX 🎄