[dropcap]E[/dropcap]very few years, one of the military airports in Switzerland features a pretty large airshow. This year, it was the airport of Sion which held the Breitling Sion Air Show 2011 from September 16th – 18th, the largest airshow of Switzerland in this year.
Sion is located in the Canton of Valais in Switzerland. Its airport is shared between civilian and military use. Sion is a pretty unique place for an airshow because of its location in the pretty narrow Rhone valley. This allows watching the airplanes in front of mountains instead of the usual sky giving a welcome change.
This edition featured vintage planes such as Blériot XI, Grumman Avenger, Yak-9, Bronco, Hunter (piloted by the Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier), Seafury, Morane 406 and Vampire, legendary planes such as the Spitfire, Catalina or Super Constellation as well as teams such as the Finnish “Midnight Hawks”, the Italian “Pioneer Team”, the “Patrouille de France”, the Swiss “PC-7 Team” and the “Patrouille Suisse”. The public could also enjoy the flight demonstrations of the F/A-18C Hornet, the Rafale, the Eurofighter or the Gripen. The highlight of the event was on Friday with Jetman Yves Rossy flying with together with the Breitling Wingwalkers.
Despite the rather poor weather on Saturday and Sunday, the event attracted over 62’000 visitors to appreciate the various flight demonstrations of over 120 planes.
The organizer did a wonderful job with 3 days packed with flight demonstrations leaving only little breaks during the day, excellent infrastructures to cope with the expected crowd, not forgetting the excellent speaker.
The next airshow in Sion is scheduled in 2015.
There are more photos of the event under http://www.pbase.com/tcom/sas2011.
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