WORDS: ADAM LANDAU | PHOTOS: CLAUDE LAFRENIERE
When a major air arm marks its centenary, it ought to be a grand occasion, and the impeding 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force was the subject of much excitement and speculation over the winter. While no singular Canadian airshow had been nominated as the official centenary event, some showed more early promise than the rest. Held at CFB Trenton –Canada’s largest air base – just a few days before Canada Day and its associated major flyover in the nearby capital city of Ottawa, the Quinte International Airshow seemed like a good bet.
In hindsight, perhaps there were clues that the Quinte International Airshow wasn’t going to be a world-beater. When its website went live, it was filled with broken links, blank pages and Wix placeholder text, prompting questions on social media as to whether the event was legitimate. To sign up for the airshow newsletter, visitors were encouraged to contact one of the base PAOs and ask to be added to the mailing list. To a visitor looking to fork out hundreds of dollars on flights, hotels and photo pit tickets, this was disconcerting and, frankly, weird.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from travelling the world’s best (and worst!) airshows, it’s that the quality of a flying display cannot be pre-empted by the standard of the website – last year’s Italian Air Force centenary bash was clear evidence of that. As far as the flying display was concerned, there was an early spell of promising confirmations: the Frecce Tricolori, visiting Canada for the first time in 30 years, were the first major announcement, albeit largely publicised with images of an M-345 mocked up in airshow colours rather than the team’s actual AT-339As. That mistake aside, announcements continued apace, with the Viper Demonstration Team, CF-18 Demonstration Team and a very nice selection of warbirds all turning heads at an early stage.
Things looked to be shaping up well, but then, just as some momentum had been built up, a schedule was published and it was revealed that the line up was complete. The show, it transpired, would top out at a paltry ten acts to fill roughly five hours; a nice mix of performers, without a doubt, but not even close to enough.
By the time the airshow came around, with very little further substance having been added to the show, I was hardly bursting with enthusiasm. A slow-paced practice day on Friday, followed by heavy rain on Saturday didn’t improve the mood. But there’s little that can cheer me up more so than sunny skies and friendly Canadian hospitality, which is exactly what we got on Sunday. It was a pleasantly cool morning, the deep blue sky flecked with specks of dazzling white cloud. There was a laid-back soundtrack of live music as we breezed through perhaps the friendliest security check I’ve ever encountered. Life was good.
On the ground, it must be said, Trenton put on quite a show. There was at least one example of almost every type in the Royal Canadian Air Force’s inventory, and of the Trenton-based types, there were usually several. Perhaps the highlights were a pair of CC-150s (one grey, one blue and white), plus the first CC-330 Husky, which will very soon be taking over the 150’s duties. The expansive ramp space was plenty big enough to absorb the crowd without feeling at all cramped, and it was dotted with a small number of buskers, adding some life and colour to what could have easily been a drab and sterile environment. Everyone – from aircrew to traffic marshals – was cheerful, relaxed, and gave the discernible impression that there was nothing in the world that they wanted to do more than chatting with whomever happened to be standing in their general vicinity. At so many airshows on military bases, it can feel like the staff regard your attendence as a necessary inconvenience, but here, attendees felt not just welcome, but genuinely valued. It was a most refreshing contrast.
While the show on the ground was commendable, the flying display itself felt like it never quite got going. It unfolded at a lethargic pace at times; Kyle Fowler’s ten minute Long-EZ performance got a 20 minute slot. A solo CC-177 was given 22 minutes!
The flying started with a Search & Rescue demonstration from a CH-146 Griffon, during which I lost count of the number of times I saw people getting slowly hoisted down, and then slowly hoisted up again, while the helicopter hovered interminably at show centre. Then, curiously, the flying display was “opened” for a second time, as the Skyhawks parachute team commenced their show. I like a good parachute act, and the Skyhawks most certainly are very good, but their 60 minute slot was roughly 59 minutes longer than any parachute team should reasonably be asked to provide entertainment for. I think it’s fair to say that they did their best, but isolated, seconds-long bursts of entertainment sparsely distributed across an entire hour was not exactly a gripping way to run proceedings. Afterwards, their CC-130J Hercules jump ship performed a couple of enjoyable flypasts, one of them at a very steep bank angle indeed.
The standard of military demonstration teams is not a factor that is within the organisers’ control, but their 2024 allocation didn’t always help the show gain much pace. The US Air Force sent the Viper Demonstration Team, flying a gloriously pretty special scheme F-16CM Fighting Falcon. While this has never been an especially dynamic performance as compared to other F-16 displays, and lasts far longer than any fast jet solo reasonably needs to, it felt even higher, further away and more drawn-out than usual at Trenton. It is also repetitive in the extreme. I’d argue that the hallmark of the very best fast jet displays – France’s Rafale C, the UAE’s Mirage 2000-9, the defunct Belgian F-16AM display and so on – is that there should never be more than a second or two when the jet is neither pitching, rolling or yawing, but the Viper Demo Team specialises in doing none of the above, most of the time. Do you like protracted run-ins for straight-and-level fast passes? Well, you’re in luck: we got four of them. Four!
Things improved markedly when the Royal Canadian Air Force took centrestage with their CF-188A Hornet solo demonstration. Like the F-16, the Hornet was wearing an extremely attractive special scheme and looked utterly sublime as it blasted around the sky. After its solo display, the Hornet joined up with the Mustang Mk.4, Spitfire Mk.IX and Hurricane Mk.XII of the Victory Flight for three attractive formation passes, two of which nicely exposed the colourful top sides of all the aircraft in the formation.
The Victory Flight’s warbirds also participated in what was dubbed the “RCAF 100 flyover”. The line up for this segment was never clearly delineated and aircraft seemed to be added or removed without explanation on several occasions leading up to the show, but the final selection consisted of the Mustang, Spitfire and Hurricane flying in the lead, followed by a Lancaster Mk.V, B-25J Mitchell and Firefly Mk.VI in loose trail behind them.
This enviable smorgasbord of warbirds was not put to especially good use, however. As is all too common at North American airshows, the warbirds flew a racetrack pattern with the elements not quite close enough together to call it a “formation”, but not quite far enough apart to appreciate each participant individually. The airshow’s website was keen to point out that the Victory Flight could perform “free-wheeling tailchases” – well, perhaps they can, but they didn’t. And it’s not like there wasn’t time. Instead, over the course of about half an hour, we saw half a dozen or so identical passes: gentle topsides from right to left, repeated ad infinitum. Photogenic, certainly, but it sure would have been nice to see at least a modicum of variety. It speaks volumes that, unlike most of the other photos in this review, all the warbird images you see here were taken from alternative viewing locations outside the air base itself.
There were two big jet aerobatic teams at Trenton – the Frecce Tricolori and the Snowbirds – and they could hardly have provided a bigger contrast. The Frecce Tricolori, as usual, were reliable, flamboyant and colourful. The Snowbirds, on the other hand, were the precise opposite. Their weekend was blighted by technical problems, with two jets having to bail during their Friday practice display (one could be replaced and the display resumed; the other simply landed) and Sunday’s display suffering no fewer than three Terminate calls – two due to technical problems, causing one jet to land, and the other due to a pilot flying the wrong manoeuvre and punching through cloud. Not once at Trenton did the team make it to the end of the show with the same number of jets with which they started it. I felt desperately sorry for them.
All in all, the flying display felt like a bit of a missed opportunity, partly due to the Snowbirds’ torrid weekend which saw Sunday end on a bit of a low note, and partly due to the number of worthy elements that feel like they ought to have been achievable, but weren’t included. So much of the RCAF’s story was left untold. There were airshow-capable jet warbirds on the ground, including two CT-133s – couldn’t one of them have flown to represent the early jet age? Couldn’t one of the multiple static CC-150s have flown? Couldn’t we have seen the warbird tailchase? Yes, it’s easy to sit at home and come up with ideas, and perhaps there are reasons why some of those above couldn’t have happened, but make no mistake: this was a typical Canadian airshow, plus the Frecce Tricolori. It was not a history-making RCAF 100 event.
For all its shortcomings, many of which were not remotely the fault of the organisers, the Quinte International Airshow did not have to be an especially expensive excursion. Standard daily admission tickets started at $10 – for a show with several rare warbirds, two fast jet displays and two national aerobatic teams, that must be praised as nothing other than excellent value. Photo pit tickets were rather less reasonable, starting at $157 for the day or $300 for the weekend. Adding a nasty sting, mysterious taxes and service charges were discretely added at the checkout, increasing the cost of a general admission day ticket by a barely-noticeable $2 but adding $54 to the cost of weekend photo pit access. This little shock prompted me to abandon a cart full of photo pit passes and procure standard tickets instead, reducing the cost by well over 90% and making only a negligible difference to my enjoyment of the day, such was the atmosphere and level of crowding within the regular showground.
The Quinte International Airshow made itself a difficult event to look forward to, but come the day, it must be said that I really rather enjoyed myself. As airshows go, this was one of the more pleasant ones to attend as a general admission ticket holder (albeit I was able to use premium parking; there were allegedly some major problems with the shuttle bus service to the off-site car parks, which I was fortunate to avoid). I expended minimal effort, felt minimal stress, and I saw two of the prettiest special scheme jets on the circuit, flying in just about the most perfect lighting conditions and cloudscapes that it is possible to imagine. That all counts for a lot.
Ultimately, one of the best ways to get the true measure of an airshow trip is to look back at the photos and videos, and see what emotions they inspire. And, despite all the criticism above, when I catch myself looking at clips from my visit to Trenton, I can’t help but smile.