Sunderland International Airshow
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Sunderland International Airshow is an annual airshow held near Roker Seafront in Sunderland. It is held over 2 days, normally the last weekend in July. Over both days the airshow attracts around 1,000,000 spectators. It is also tradition for the Royal Navy to have a warship off the coast, which is often used by the Black Cats as a base to shorten transit times. It is normally HMS Ocean, the adopted warship of Sunderland. However, in 2007, the amphibious assault ship HMS Albion made an appearance instead as HMS Ocean was busy with other commitments.
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[edit] Affiliations
Durham Tees Valley Airport is used as a base for most of the flying displays, compared with previous use of Newcastle Airport, this is possibly because Tees Valley has fewer flights resulting in faster turnarounds for aircraft departing and arriving from the airshow.
Newcastle International Airport was used up until 2007, the only aircraft in the 2007 show to use Newcastle were the C-130K Hercules of the RAF Falcons Parachuting team, and the Eastern Airways BAe Jetstream 41 North East England Livery and the Red Arrows. The organisers stopped using this as the main airport because they have a tight flight schedule with many more low cost flights departing now then in previous years.
[edit] The Green Airshow
In 2007 Sunderland City Council teamed up with Gentoo and CarbonNeutral North East to reduce and off-set all the emissions caused by staging the two-day show. There was a Green Village with many environmental stalls.
[edit] Highlights
The show has many highlights that return every year including:[1]
- Red Arrows
- Eurofighter Typhoon
- Black Cats (Royal Navy)
- Merlin
- AV-8 Harrier (Although due to military commitments, it was not there in 2007)
- The Blades
- F-16
- The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight
- The RAF Falcons
In 2007 a few new displays turned up including:
- Royal Marines Role Demo - 6 Assault Squadron
- RAF Chinook Display Team - Personnel from 18 and 27 Squadrons
- Eastern Airways BAe Jetstream 41 North East England Livery
- Catalina G-PBYA
[edit] Gallery
 The Red Arrows At Sunderland International Airshow in 2005. |
 Eastern Airways BAe Jetstream 41 In One Northeast Livery. |
 The RAF Falcons landing at the Sunderland Airshow 2007. |
 Catalina G-PBYA At the Sunderland Airshow 2007 with floats down ready for a water landing. |
 Red Arrows at Sunderland in 2007 |
