The Romanian state airline TAROM celebrated its 55th anniversary in 2009. For this occasion, the Boeing 737-78J YR-BGG (c/n 28442 / 827) was repainted in a commemorative scheme in autumn 2008.

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Impressions from Las Vegas McCarran Airport taken during October 2009:

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Impressions from Phoenix Skyharbor as seen during October 2009:

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Impressions from Phoenix-Mesa Gateway taken during October 2009:

The Nightway 2009 deployment started on 9 November 2009 with the flight of no less than twelve F/A-18C and D from Switzerland to Norway.

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The MD-90 of Hello is seen being ferried to Stockholm Arlanda for maintenance. Afterwards, it will enter service with Delta Air Lines as N918DN.

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Darwin Airline took delivery of their 5th Saab 2000 on 29 September when the aircraft was ferried from Basle to Lugano-Agno. This Saab 2000 HB-IYD (c/n 059) already saw service with Crossair and Swiss International Airlines before joining Polet Flight as VP-BPP.

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This Boeing 757-231ER of Delta Air Lines was repainted in SkyTeam colours only few days before this image was taken. SkyTeam is the third confederacy to have aircraft of their partner airlines promoting the alliance. Each airline will paint up at least one aircraft by the end of 2009.

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The island of Gran Canaria was visited on the way back home from Lanzarote.

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The Swiss Air Force normally trains night operations with fighter aircraft once a week during the winter months – more exactly between October and March. As of 1 October 2009, a new night flying training schedule is being introduced. Now, the fighters normally fly on Monday evening (with Tuesday being the back-up day) instead of Tuesday (with a Thursday backup). 

The reason for this change of date were the optimisation of human resources as the Swiss Air Force generally starts the operations later on Monday mornings than on other days. The actual number of flights will remain unchanged.

This exchange between the Belgian Air Force and the Swiss Air Force took place between 14 and 25 September 2009. A total of 5 F/A-18C/D and 2 F-5 deployed to Kleine Brogel. Part of the deployment was the participation of Fliegerstaffel 11 at the NTM 2009

Aircraft involved were:

The Two-seater J-5232 deployed to Kleine Brogel on 17 September, whereas the other 5 F/A-18 flew from Meiringen to Kleine Brogel on 14 September 2009.

Support was provided by both the King Air 350 T-721 and the Beech 1900 T-729.

The island of Lanzarote was re-visited after two years. The amount of traffic was somewhat reduced compared to the previous two visits, but this was something to be expected in light of the current economic situation.

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Impressions from Basle Airport

The Squadron Live Firing 2009 campaign took place at Wittmund in Northern Germany between 20 July and 28 August 2009. The goal was to use a considerable number of the old AIM-9P air-to-air missiles. However, an incident on 28 July when a missile disintegrated just after getting of the rail meant an immediate stop of the live firing. The campaign however continued.

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Impressions from the Oldtimerflugtage Kestenholz

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Four Pilatus PC-21 of the Pilotschool flew to Beauvechain (Belgium) on 17 July 2009 for a week of joint training with the Belgian Air Force.

Aircraft involved were:

The aircraft were using the callsigns SUI-921 and SUI-922.

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Delta Air Lines is currently operating 16 McDonnell Douglas MD-90 aircraft. It plans to increase its fleet with three more aircraft of this type that were previously operated by Hello Airlines. Details are as follows:

The first aircraft, former HB-JIA, has already been flown to Victorville on 1 April 2009 where it will undergo maintenance and upgrade to Delta standards. It is rumoured to enter service in 2010.

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The Hawker Hunter J-4206 saw service with the Swiss Air Force between June 1975 and December 1994. It was withdrawn from use on 16 December 1994 and remained in possesion of the Swiss Air Force together with four other aircraft (J-4032, J-4082, J-4201 and J-4203). On 14 June 1995, it was transferred from Payerne to Buochs and two years later – on 2 April 1997 – stored in the underground area of Raron airfield.

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Pilatus Aircraft Ltd completed the update of all 28 Pilatus PC-7 scheduled by the Swiss Air Force for the update to the new NCPC-7 standard. The inital contract only saw the update for 18 aircraft and was completed by 29 February 2008. At the very same date, an additional contract for 10 more aircraft was signed.

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Hans Prisi spend a big part of his working life at the military airfield at Dubendorf. He was very interested in the military aviation and started early to collect pictures of these aircraft. In the last couple of years, he produced several reference-books on aircraft of the Swiss Air Force which can be obtained directly at the author.

The author previously published a booklet on the De Havilland Vampire (DH.100, DH.113 and DH.115) and another one on the De Havilland Venom (DH.112). Today, these two booklets were merged into a book covering all De Havilland twin-tailed types. Additional information on the fate of those aircraft surviving the torch at Buochs and other places in Switzerland have been added.

The author describes on 151 pages in detail the history and fate of each individual aircraft.

Impressions from the Zigermeet 2009 at Mollis:

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Seven Swiss F-18 Hornets deployed to Solenzara (France) on 25 may 2009 for a joint air-to-air gunnery exercise with the French Mirage 2000. All aircraft returned on 5 June 2009.

Aircraft involved were:

One of the aircraft was considered as spare. The ground crew was flow on board of Darwin Airways’ Saab 2000 HB-IZZ to Solenzara.

* J-5237 was replaced by J-5010 on 2 June 2009

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Swiss Intl. Airlines took delivery of their 20th Airbus A.320 on 21 May 2009. The aircraft first flew in spring 2002 and was delivered on 30 April 2002 to LTU as D-ALTG.

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Swiss Intl. Airlines continues to cuts on their long-haul capacity. This is already the second cut announced in the last four weeks. The following routes will continue to be operated at reduced frequency as of 1 July 2009:

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Zurich airport launched a new website on 15 April 2009. The new site also integrated new webcams as the old one has been disconnected prior to the re-construction of Terminal 2.

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Soon after the introduction of the Pilatus PC-7 as basic trainer for the Swiss Air Force, some tests with different schemes were conducted in order to improve the detectability of the trainers during flights.

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During the reconstruction work of Terminal 2 at Zurich airport, the famous viewing terrace on top of the terminal has been moved to Terminal E thus allowing different insight of the traffic at the airport.

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The deployment of three Super Puma helicopters to help refugees in Albania in the aftermath of the NATO bombing campaign in the Balcan happens 10 years ago.

The Swiss government then decided to support the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) work by deploying three Super Puma helicopters to Tirana. The first helicopter landed on 6 April 1999 in the Albanian capital.

During that operation – which lastet 3 months, no less than 5 Super Puma helicopters were deployed there. The last three helicopters returned to Alpnach on 26 July 1999. The UNHCR-titles were removed the next day.

The Swiss Air Force announced on 3 April 2008, that the involvement of the Swiss Air Force in the operation EUFOR Althea (peace keeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina) will come to an end by the end of September 2009.

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This exchange between the Belgian Air Force and the Swiss Air Force took place between 30 March and 1 April 2009. A total of 2 SF.260M of 5 Sqd was then deployed to Sion.

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Impressions from Paris Charles-de-Gaule photographed in March 2009:

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The Swiss Air Force operated a total of 160 Hawker Hunter between 1959 and 1994. Initially procured as fighter it was relegated to the ground attack role with the introduction of the Mirage III and with the F-5 Tiger II.

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Impressions from Geneva photographed in February 2009:

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The Falcon 10 VP-BAF (c/n 210) took off from Vienna at 15:06 on a flight to Samedan. It attempted to land there on 16:14, but crashed on the runway, killing the crew of two and severly injuring the sole passenger on board.

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The World Economic Forum at Davos took place between 28 January and 1 February 2009. The Swiss Air Force enforced the No Fly Zone over Davos with their F/A-18s and F-5s

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Civil and military traffic at Sion during the World Economic Forum 2009:

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Sion Airport offers many opportunities for the enthusiast to take pictures from. A list of the most commonly used spots is provided starting with the viewing area next to the military entrance to the airport.

If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can use these co-ordinates in order to locate the spots mentioned – alternatively, you could download the file with these locations. Some of the locations mentioned require the use of a step ladder.

Samedan Airport offers many opportunities for the enthusiast to take pictures from. A list of the most commonly used spots is provided starting with the viewing area next to the ramp.

If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can use these co-ordinates in order to locate the spots mentioned – alternatively, you could download the file with these locations. Some of the locations mentioned require the use of a step ladder.

The World Economic Forum at Davos took place between 28 January and 1 February 2009. Many visitors arrived at Zurich airport and then proceeded to Davos by either helicopter, limousine or by train.

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The well-known webcam on top of terminal 2 at Zurich airport has been torn down due to the re-construction work at this terminal. The airport intends to have a new webcam on top of terminal E soon. In the meantime no webcam is available.

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A single Fokker 100 OE-LVF was observed with large webtitles on its engine. The writing consisted of small letters “austrian.com” on a light background which reads “www”.

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Sunny Saturday at Innsbruck:

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Cold weather photography at Samedan:

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Some aircraft parked over New Year at Samedan were covered with snow overnight. These aircraft will surely have to be de-iced before being flown again.

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Impressions from Zurich photographed in the first quarter of 2009:

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Impressions from Zurich photographed during the 4th quarter 2009:

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Impressions from Zurich photographed in September 2009:

Impressions from Zurich photographed in August 2009:

Impressions from Zurich photographed in July 2009:

Impressions from Zurich photographed in June 2009:

Impressions from Zurich photographed in May 2009:

Impressions from Zurich photographed in April 2009:

The webmaster introduces links to other websites on the Swiss Air Force and to sites of good friends.

Please note that when you click on one of these links, you are leaving the AIRcraft PICtures of Switzerland website. The webmaster does not exercise any control over the current and future information and content you may find at these locations. Therefore, the webmaster assumes no responsibility for the content on or available from any external website. At the time these links were listed, they were free of illegal contents.

Link- or banner exchanges

The simplified concept behind link- or banner exchanges is: "I will show a link to your page on my site if you are showing a link to my page on your site." As we are only promoting sites of friends or selected sites on the Swiss Air Force, we have no interest in a link- or banner exchange. All such mails will be deleted immediately.

AIRcraft PICtures from Switzerland now supports RSS for its images. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it's basically a computer-readable summary of the content of a Web page.

The benefit of subscribing to an RSS feed from this site is that you will be informed once new images are posted here. A RSS Reader (such as Feedreader) will do all the work, showing you only what's new since the last time you've checked the RSS feed.

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In 1985 the Swiss Air Force had the opportunity to use the NATO ACMI range located at Decimomannu Air Base, Sardinia under the name "Sardinien Kampagnie 85 (SAKA 85)". This deployment proved so successful that annual SAKA deployments continued here right up until 1989 but for political reasons Swiss operations ceased at "Deci" in 1990 and the Swiss Air Force began looking for alternative facilities.

An alternative for Deci was found at RAF Waddington in the UK which is situated close to the BAE North Sea ACMI Range. The initial deployment – called NORKA 1990 – in November 1990 took place only few month after the opening of the range. Early operations involved three to four weeks of ACMI training with the Mirage IIIS and F-5, however in more recent operations only the F-18 "Hornet" has taken part.

Night operations in Switzerland are only possible in a very limited way. Therefore the Swiss Air Force started to look for other possibilities to train such operations. Operation NIGHTWAY (NIGHT Flying training NorWAY) first took place in 1998 at Oerland AB in Norway and has been conducted there annually, (with the exception of 1999), ever since.

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