AirVG 2024 - MiG-21 farewell | Airshow Dispatches S07E02
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 พ.ค. 2024
- Highlights from AirVG 2024, Croatia's largest and most important airshow of the year.
AirVG celebrated the arrival of Croatia's first Rafales just three weeks previously, and also served as an opportunity to say farewell to the beloved MiG-21. Croatia is the last remaining MiG-21 operator in Europe, and this was probably the type's last airshow appearance.
Almost the entire Croatian Air Force inventory participated, with the Zlin 242, Mi-171, OH-58 and thte excellent Krila Oluje aerobatic team of PC-9s also taking part.
Video by Adam Landau
If you enjoyed this, do stay tuned for our next episodes! In June, we'll be recording at the Midlands Air Festival and RAF Cosford Air Show in the UK, and the Quinte International Airshow in Canada.
Thank You !
From Croatia !
Yeah, we are proud of our krila oluje (wings of strom) - their name stems from the operation storm, our biggest war operation in our independent state history, when we liberated our land in four days, less than ten with mopping up.
Our migs played an incerdible role in that operation and were used in ways mig 21s never have had, and in fact never supposed to be.
And zadar's zemunik airport is almost a second home for the british red arrows, they are very often there trainig with our guys, maybe every year even, just recently within a month they were the guests.
Zemunik airport is situated and oriented that way that always has one runaways available despite the famous bura and other winds along the coast, and they can fly over the mountains above some incredible national parks, but also over the sea and features like the kornati national park of some 200 islands in zadar's archipelago.
Cheers from slavonia, croatia, nice vid and presentation mate!
And rightly so! One of the best aerobatic teams in the world and they are as worthy of national pride as anything else! I did not realise the significance of their name, so thanks for that information.
Thank you for covering this show. Kind regards from Croatia!
Fantastic stuff again Adam, awesome footage with your usual great commentary. Cosford looks set to be a great show, plenty of french stuff!
Sad to see the Mig 21 being phased out but not surprising! Always look forward to your videos great commentary. And will maybe see you at Cosford so far looks like it's going to be a good one 👍
There is a push by some in the CroAf to keep one example airworthy as a museum flying piece.. Fingers crossed.
Amazing show, thanks for the video
Great episode again, looking forward to MAF, see you there!
Thanks, see you at Ragley Hall!
The pilots who were "pinched" by Qatar were paid big bucks. I remember reading they were offered contracts worth 300 thousand USD/year plus accommodation and a range rover.
Hard to say no to that!
great video and very informative too...good work...
Amazing Show, thanks
I will miss MIG-21. Iconic jet...
awsome, thanks :)
What a fantastic looking jet. The red and white chequered scheme looks so good. MiG-21s always seemed to have a knack of pulling off wild colour schemes. Certainly an aircraft that will be missed. I'm glad I got to see it albeit the once at RIAT 2019.
A great episode as always! You have a very unique style when it comes to filming and commentary.
It looked like a great day! Hopefully see you at Cosford or RIAT.
Whats your favourite colour scheme ever applied to an aircraft?
Tricky question and lots of options. Rafale Solo Display 2017 (topside), CF-18 Demo Team 2017, the RAF retirement Tornado and SoloTurk spring to mind but there are many others equally worthy of mention!
"Unique filming style" - I'm surprised and intrigued. Stylistically I aim for little more than keeping the aircraft more or less in the frame for as much of the time as possible.
I'll be at Cosford and RIAT, albeit based in non-public areas at both shows I suspect.
@@ThisisFlightAce! All of those colour schemes were fantastic. Of the Tornado retirement schemes, I really liked the camouflage jet, it looked very mean.
I'd actually forgotten about the RCAF Hornet 2017 display jet looked amazing. The RCAF100 jet looks really good too.
You do! I like how you don't zoom in too close to the aircraft, it gives more perspective of movement etc. Plus I like your commentary style, it's very informative.
Nice! That will make filming a lot easier at Cosford. The lineup for Cosford this year looks brilliant at the moment. I can't believe it's 17 years since I last went to a Cosford show.
Damn, missed my chance for a Mig 21 ride
I think Croatia needs to consider acquiring the PC-21 as a lead in trainer for the Rafales, that is if they are serious about operating them to there full abilities.
Agreed on that! This jets or even great Italian trainers.
❤🇭🇷✌️
So if i understood correctly, this was the last flight of an croatian MiG? I am coming to croatia in september and was hoping to see a MiG-21 flying, but it might be too late :/
Last airshow flight, not the very last flight.
But I think September will be too late anyway. Even if they are still in service - which sounds unlikely - they are only doing one flight every week or two and the times are not announced in advance, so you would have to be very lucky to see one.
If this is really last flight of our MiG-21 , I feel really disappointed for not showing off our MiG-21 "kockica" in the air.. We were expecting a real Air Show , but this was a little bit disappointing because they were flying for like 10 minutes. It was 1 , I repeat 1 low pass of MiG.. I don't know , maybe my expectations were a little too high 😢
"Kockica" is no longer flyable. The last time it flew was almost seven years ago.
Compare this airshow to the public farewell airshow appearances of other aircraft in recent years (eg. RAF Tornado in 2018, Slovak MiG-29 in 2023, Romanian MiG-21 in 2023, Italian AMX in 2023, Dutch F-16s later this year - mostly aircraft from much bigger and better-funded air forces) - all limited to non-aerobatic flypasts or even just static displays in their final airshow season.
The MiG at AirVG got a far better send-off than any of those other aircraft. A 10 minute flight, including aerobatics, is almost unheard of for a farewell airshow appearance nowadays and certainly far exceeded the expectations of all of us visiting from abroad.
Yes, unfortunately I think you were expecting too much.
@@ThisisFlight
Great and so informative reply mate! Also extraordinary video! 👍
I agree with you that our Mig 21 got great farewell performance!
I'm also very pleased that our Air force finally acquired modern jets and 12 Rafales F3R are the top notch for Croatia, relatively small country of only 3.8 million people!
I just hope for that our government in foreseeable future decides to buy at least another squadron of these beauties since this would be more serious number of jets with each squadron stationed in Zagreb and at the Zadar Zemunik airbase.
Kind regards from Croatia
I'm at midlands
Great video. Thanks
I think Poland still operates the mig21
They do not. Poland retired its MiG-21s 20 years ago.
@@ThisisFlight there was a mig21 at riat last year but I can't remember who opened it.
There was not. A MiG-21 last visited RIAT in 2019, operated by the Romanian Air Force. Romania retired its MiG-21s since then. As stated in the video, Croatia is the last remaining MiG-21 operator in Europe.
@@ThisisFlight thanks I looked through my riat23 book and found that is was the polish air forces su22 fitter that was there. I'm generally sorry for the mistake.
Poland still fly some Su-22's which have a similar air intake to the Mig-21 but is a completely different aircraft.