The 'At Home' days were first and foremost to promote the RAF and show the taxpayers what they were getting for their money, of course.
There is an increasingly a corporate feel to RIAT. The Raytheon static park, with its tables and chairs and strategically located pot plants (Really? Why?), shows this. It is a trade show exhibition through and through, and one wonders why the company feels the need to present its products in that way at an event where 90% of the people walking past are not in the trade. I will be charitable and say it shows a lack of imagination.
The other thing that grates is the way some companies have their aircraft in private areas. This is something that RIAT really should have refused the first time it was suggested, as it does show a complete lack of indifference to the ticket-buying public from some of the corporate sponsors, and indeed only reinforces the understandable anti-corporate feeling that results. It also reinforces that idea -as jalfrezi suggests- that RIAT happily allow the sponsors to have their way, leading to the tail wagging the dog rather than the other way around; the companies will only have to hint at pulling out, and RIAT will roll over to have their tummy scratched. It does lead to the presence of what seems to be a sizeable corporate complex right at the centre of the showground and yes, it does seem to take ages to walk past these clinically white structures. By the time you've thrown in the other enclosures it can make any average punter feel that they are there on sufferance only.
Some here have mentioned the far east and the far west of the crowdline. I have noticed that the eastern end has become a lot more popular since display aircraft have been using the area at the south of the runway at the end. I have always gravitated there, as I particularly like landing shots, and it is more and more busy every year. On Friday this year it was three deep in some places. The far west is much quieter, and for those who suggest going there to watch the display, I assume you have never done so yourself. Unless there is a sudden wind change and everything has to take off and land at that end, you can sit there and count
for the rest of the day or watch the far off displays with your binoculars.
RIAT is a business. It exists to make money for the RAFCTE. That it only covenants approximately 10% of its income to the charity is a good reason why you have to fork out £12 for a programme or a fiver for a bacon and egg roll. Or a couple of hundred quid for a pavilion seat. It also means that for every £1 that goes to charity the organisation spends about another £9, which is a pi$$-poor ratio and really ought to make the management team sit down and wonder quite where a lot of it goes.
More generally, and as Dan213 states in his somewhat forthright and blunt way*, of course airshows have changed over the last two or three decades, and I have seen more than one organiser present their event as 'MORE than just an airshow!', which I never quite understand. It would suggest a lack of confidence in their own product. Of course I see the need for supplementary displays, and here I applaud RIAT with the techno zone and their attempts to promote STEM subjects to youngsters. I even see the need for a fun fair (in the next field, perhaps
) as I do recognise that a lot of kids will not want to sit and watch several hours of flying non-stop, and also for the variety of traders. I do wonder, however, if any UKAR members have ever bought or know somebody who has bought a hot tub or some wooden garden furniture at an airshow
? Perhaps it could be the subject of an episode in the next series of
The Apprentice.
But all of these are, as I said, supplementary. The prime reason for going to an airshow, whether you are an enthusiast or a non-enthusiast, adult or child, is to see aircraft. I've never heard anyone say that they're going to Fairford etc because they're looking forward to browsing ethnic jewellery or trying a climbing wall or listening to that jazz group or sitting in a marquee and making a model kit. No, they're looking forward to seeing the Red Arrows or the Lancaster or a strange, exotic jet that will never be seen again as it's going out of service three months later. Somebody said that you cannot compare RIAT to Shuttleworth, but maybe Shuttleworth has a better idea of what the people that visit it on flying days want out of it; there is a distinct lack of bouncy castles at its events, but not of paying punters.
Airshow organisers, and I count RIAT among them, ought to stand up more for their industry and not think of the aircraft as a sideshow.
* Ah, the certainty of youth! I remember it well -as well as the eventual humbling by experience.