The fourth article from our series focused on the European aviation events of the 2024 season, brings – regrettably – some information about recently cancelled or postponed shows.
The first of them is Danish Air Show, the biennial event initially scheduled for 9th June 2024. Nevertheless, current operational tasks of the Danish armed forces caused the show was postponed to next year.
Therefore, the next edition of Danish Air Show is scheduled to take place on 15th June 2025. The event is going to be joined with celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the Royal Danish Air Force.
Legendy Nebes (Legends of the Sky) is another show which have been recently postponed to 2025. The second edition of one of the youngest air shows in Europe was originally planned to be organized on 2nd and 3rd August.
Regrettably, the part of Hradec Králové airfield – where the show would take place – was rented for another, non-aviation related event to be organized less than a week before. There was a threat there would not be enough time between those events to prepare a safe air show environment. Taking under account experiences from last year and possibility of unfavourable weather conditions, the organizers of Legendy Nebes show made a tough decision to postpone the event to next year. There was a threat there would not be enough time between those events to prepare a safe air show environment.
In conclusion, the show was postponed to 2025, however without giving any exact date for now.
Unfortunately, August of 2024 will be marked by more cancellations. In our article focused on future of European military demonstration teams – Nothing lasts forever – a cloudy future of European military display teams, issued in February of 2024 – we have already mentioned cancellation of AirSpirit24, an air show held every ten years to celebrate the jubilee of the Swiss Air Force.
On 26th January this year, the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) announced that some of the major Swiss military events planned for 2024 and 2025 had to be cancelled, due to difficult financial situation. It included, regrettably, AirSpirit24, previously scheduled for 30th and 31st August.
In spite of the fact that information about Kecskemét Airshow 2024 in Hungary is still shared by some web sites, this aviation event will not take place this year. In December of last year, the Hungarian Ministry of Defence expressed its will to organize the event in 2024, with date scheduled for 24th and 25th August.
However, it was never officially confirmed and rumours about further postponing of the show started to spread already in March of 2024. Since then, there were no further information about the event nor its participants.
Slovak International Air Fest (SIAF), the biggest and most-known air show in Slovakia, was also cancelled. Originally, the event was planned for 31st August and 1st September 2024.
According to the official web site of the show, on 28th May this year the SIAF organization team was officially informed by the Slovak Air Force authorities that the country´s Ministry of Defence decided about cancellation of this year edition.
Shortly after, the official statement was issued by the Slovak MoD. It included not only the confirmation of the cancellation of this year´s edition – due to unacceptable high cost and logistics requirements – but also implied the MoD was not interested in any further cooperation with the SIAF organization team. And a completely different form of presentation of the Slovak Armed Forces to general public will be chosen in the future.
Last but not least, we would like to bring your attention to wave of scam invitations the aviation enthusiasts are recently receiving in social media from several fake air show profiles. They are usually copy information and photos concerning a particular air show from their official profiles or event pages on Facebook
Apart from the fact that for any official events no private social media profiles are created, and therefore no air show is sending you requests for being added to your friends list, those scams are easy to be verified. They never include any official information, such as website, location, contact details; their profiles are usually created shortly before the event and have no history and, additionally, the information included in posts is badly translated.
Shortly before the event, those fake profiles try to convince the users to follow a live stream from the event, that usually is available only after sharing your sensitive personal information. Certainly, there are no streams hidden behind those links and that is just a scam.
Although such activities were present in social media for years, their number has increased rapidly in recent months. Only a few days ago, we have received eleven fake invitations from ´Tag der Bundeswehr´, followed by several other sent from false profiles of different European air shows, such as Aviation Fair and Antidotum Leszno.
Cover photo: Mi-24V, Czech Air Force, CIAF 2017
