E73 - Personal Stories: Commanding Officer, Royal Air Force Coningsby - Part 7 - The Typhoon Display

For this, my final personal stories episode of 2024, I thought I would continue the series of tales from my time as Station Commander of RAF Coningsby and cover the development of and the challenges we faced with the Typhoon Display.

With a brand new, very high profile, and very high performance aircraft, it was obvious that we would need to put together an airshow display so that we could properly demonstrate the Typhoon's performance and potential to the British public and the wider world.  

Given the already considerable demands of working up the Typhoon's operational capability, with fragile serviceability, limited numbers of aircraft, very limited on-aircraft pilot experience, and tight timelines, the creation of a safe but impressive display was a significant challenge.  However, it was a challenge that my team rose to magnificently and for the 2005 display season (the very first year we had the Typhoon properly in RAF service) we put on a great show and a range of air displays across the UK.  

That was just the start of what has become an annual Typhoon display ever since then, and the aircraft continues to thrill huge numbers of the public as well as industry professionals at a very wide range of airshows and public events every year.

It wasn't all plain sailing though and, as you will hear in the episode, we nearly had a disaster in that first season, and several other events occurred that certainly put my personal leadership skills to the test!

I hope you enjoy the story and, as ever, I would love to hear what you think so please do let me have some feedback.