With the UK celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the public will be treated to a spectacular air display to mark the monarch’s 70 years of service.
The flypast will take place on Thursday 2 June 2022, and will follow the Queen’s Birthday Parade, known as Trooping The Colour, a major display of military pageantry involving 1,500 officers and soldiers and 250 horses from the British Army’s Household Division on Horse Guards Parade.
Seventy aircraft including Red Arrows
The flypast will see 70 aircraft, including the iconic Red Arrows and historic Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, put on a show over London.
The flypast will start in the vicinity of The Wash, The North Sea and Southwold, Suffolk and Southend then route from the hold via Swaffham and Thetford and Colchester towards London to overfly Buckingham Palace.
The dispersal will occur to the south and west of the London Control Zone over Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.
The aircraft are expected to be in the sky from around 10.45am to 12.30pm, with the central London section of the flypast expected shortly after midday.
‘Fitting tribute’
Squadron Leader Greenhowe, Project Officer for the flypast, said: “We are very proud to be able to show Her Majesty The Queen, our Commander-in-Chief, on this unique occasion for the longest-serving monarch and her 70 year Platinum Jubilee, our capability and present that as a fitting and appropriate tribute for her 70-year reign. It should be a good spectacle for the country, the union, and the Commonwealth.”
Rehearsals for the event were carried out in the last week of May, when a formation flew over RAF Cranwell’s iconic College Hall, which stood in for Buckingham Palace.
Minor adjustments
Commodore Mike Baulkwill, Combat Air Force Commander, No 1 Group, who was overseeing the rehearsal, said: “I was reviewing the flypast from a safety and execution point of view, to make sure the timings, spacings, and the broad structure of the flypast was looking good for next week.
“It went really well, we’ll have to make some minor adjustments, but the timing was perfect, and the line-up was good.”
The RAF added that the flypast would take place subject to weather, serviceability, and operational commitments.
