The Australian International Air Show is a major biennial event held at Avalon Airport near Geelong, Victoria, and generally conducted over a six day period consisting of Trade Days and Public Open Days.
Australian International Air Show 2017 was held from Tuesday, February 28 to Sunday, March 05, and remaining consistent with previous events, was nothing shy of spectacular with a huge range of recreational / general aviation, corporate and military hardware on display.
Despite challenging family circumstances which remain ongoing at the time of posting, Air Queensland.blogspot was fortunate to attend the airshow on Trade Days Wednesday, March 01, and Thursday, March 02, and took the opportunity to inspect as many aircraft as possible.
Due to the large number of photo's (and video's) captured over the two day period, our coverage of the 2017 event will be presented in a number of posts, beginning with a look at some of the fighter jets that attended the airshow.
Among the more notable highlights was Royal Australian Air Force's first two (of twelve) new Boeing EA-18G Growler airborne electronic attack aircraft that recently ferried to Australia from the US. It is anticipated all twelve would have arrived at RAAF Base Amberley, near Ipswich, Queensland by mid-2017.
The United States Air Force (USAF) also ferried two Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor fifth-generation, stealth fighter jets to Australia for the six day event at Avalon.
This was complimented by the arrival of Australia's first two Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF) on Friday, March 03, however, will return to the US after the airshow for preparation to enter service with the RAAF in 2018 / 2019.
As expected, a number of Royal Australian Air Force McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F/A-18A/B and Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets were either on static display or performing regular air displays.
The RAAF also dispatched a small fleet of BAE Hawk 127 lead-in fighter jets to demonstrate their capability to the public, and are always great to watch in action.
Also demonstrating their war fighting capability were United States Air Force General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon's.
