Multiple Schweizer Luftwaffe/ Swiss Air Force Boeing F/A-18C/D Hornets touched down at RAF Leeming, North Yorkshire on November 15 with a four-week air-to-air and night operations training deployment ahead.
Exercise Yorknite21 is a training deployment that sees the Swiss Air Force annually bring aircrew and military personnel from all three F/A-18 Hornet operating squadrons of the Swiss Air Force, Fliegerstaffel 11 “Tigers”, 17 “Falcons” and 18 “Panthers” to the UK. What lies ahead is weeks of day and night air-to-air training operations with allied nations including fighter assets from the UK, and both fighter and air-to-air refuelling (AAR) assets from USAFE.
Prior to the arrival of the Swiss fighters, a chartered Helvetic Embraer E-190 passenger aircraft, registration HB-AZH, with a callsign of SUI596 bought deployment staff and support from Bern, Switzerland.Following the support aircraft was a total of eight Hornets, which touched down between 1100-1200 hours, arriving in flights of four. The first flight to touch down consisted of four F/A-18Cs with serials- J-5016, 09, 26 and 24, with the following flight of four being three F/A-18Cs and a single two-seater F/A-18D with serials- J-5004, 08, 18 and 5234.
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