Nearly a hundred aircraft flew over Paris’ Champs Elysées (France), for the Bastille Day celebrations, this 14th July. A fantastic show that lasted a good fifteen minutes.
As is customary, the ‘Patrouille de France’ opened the show, leaving red-white and blue trails in its wake. 8 Alphajets flew in their ‘Eiffel Tower’ formation in symbolic support of Paris’ candidacy as host city for the 2024 Olympic games.
Then, in order of appearance in the video you can see an E-3F Sentry AWACS escorted by four Mirage 2000s. Then four additional Mirage 2000s accompany two Alphajets. Three Rafales closely follow a C-135 tanker. Closing this first sequence is the military transport plane, the A400M.
The second part of the video, the closing sequence of the fly by, includes a large amount of helicopters, with nearly 30 machines presented in flight. There is a Puma to start with, then two Tigers, a Gazelle and another Puma fly side by side. Then we can see two Caimans and a Dolphin. A US Air Force C-130 surrounded by two Caracals closes the show.
But not quite as the final bow is taken by two ‘Patrouille de France’ Alphajets surrounding an Extra 330 flown by Captain Alexandre Orlowski, the current aerobatic world champion.
In all, the Bastille Day fly-by lasted about fifteen minutes and included 57 planes as well as 29 helicopters at an altitude of only a few hundred yards.