Location: RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, UK.

Admission: Varies, see review below

Parking: FREE

Admission pricing varies, but to attend RIAT, by North American standards, is quite expensive. (Air fare, hotel, car rental costs are not taken into consideration, just the event ticket(s)). A general admission ticket for either Saturday or Sunday is £42.50. Depending on the exchange rate in dollars, that is about $68.00 per person, and under 16 can go free with parent. A two day adult pass is  £65.00  or about $104.00. In someways, the costs are somewhat similar to Oshkosh, however, RIAT, in our opinion is a far superior show and a better value over all. Advance tickets were available on line at  £37.50 with a £4.00 booking fee per order and not per ticket, a bit of savings, if two or more tickets were purchased. There were additional upgrades available from £20.95 to  £325.00. The higher cost included the admission ticket,such as the FRIAT (Friends of Royal International Air Tattoo) tickets, VIP parking, catered lunch and beverages. If one was interested taking photos of arrival and departing aircraft for the show, separate tickets were required for the arrival days £13.95 per day and £18.95 for the departing day. As one can see, it can cost several hundred dollars to see this event, even if one just buys the most economical tickets. Thus the question arises is it worth it? Absolutely YES!

But let's get back from the hype to reality. The airport is out in the country side, in many ways in the middle of nowhere, and by this I mean, no major or wide roads leading to it. It is easy to find due to excellent signage on all the near by roads including the M4, but once off the main roads, the English country roads are very narrow, and going through small villages sometimes it narrows down to one lane. Thus traffic can truly jam up. As for parking, early arrivals are penalized, they have to park outside the airfield, on grass, and then it is a long walk to the security gates. While late arrivals after 7:30 am can drive into the grounds and most can park on tarmac, and have to walk much less! With upgraded tickets with seats reserved this is not an issue as FRIAT tickets have better parking allocation too. But for general tickets the public has to come early to secure a good spot on the flightline. Thus that means coming early, parking miles away, lining up for hours in a mile+ long queue, with people trying to barge in, walking miles to be searched by not so well trained security volunteers (some were down right rude) with metal detector wands, then having your bags searched by RAF personal (very courteous) and then to the gates to have your tickets validated. This procedure can take some time. The parking areas are colour coded, Green, Blue, Red and etc. For example for myself I got to the "Green" parking area at 6 am thus ended up in the early parking lot, on grass. By that time there was a line of about 1/2 mile long in front of the air base gate, which is about a good 3/4 of a mile away from the event gate. So I stood in line until 7:30, and finally the line started to inch forward. It was 8:20 by the time I got to the security check, and another 15 minutes later I finally entered the show grounds. Then I had to walk another mile or so to find the Media location. Comfortable walking shoes are a MUST! Once inside the ground there were some kind of free bus shuttle was available, and I even tried to get on one, but the driver was a bit rude, and informed that he doesn't stop near my destination, so that was that.

I would like to thank RAFCTE Head of Media and Public Relations Richard Arquati, Laura Iles, Press and Publicity Officer for their generous help and for their hospitality!