Kleine Brogel (Belgium)

Spottersdays 2021

11 - 13 September 2021

For the former KLu F-16, refer to the Wrecks & Relics section in Scramble magazine issue 510. The Cirrus looks like a pure civilian aircraft, wearing only Airbus Flight Academy titles. It is in service as a French Air Force trainer at Salon de Provence though. These aircraft were initially operated by Cassidian Aviation Training Services (CATS) for the AdlA, but now operate under the Airbus Flight Academy brand.

The Belgian Herc is still wearing its ‘50 Years in Belgian Service - Tenacity’ livery. All Belgian F-16s in this report except for Dark Falcon were operated by 10 wing.

Rafale 133 was an EC02.030 machine judging by its SPA93 badge, but apparently on loan to its Tiger Squadron neighbours of EC03.030 at Mont-de-Marsan.

Credits: Ronny Jansen, Rob Hendriks.

At Kleine Brogel, 31 Tiger Squadron also hosted the “Ext-ROAR-dinary NATO Tigermeet”, XTM21 in short, with a lot of flying planned over four weekdays surrounding the airshow weekend. On 6 August 2021 however, it was announced that the exercise part of XTM21 had been cancelled due to COVID-19 measures still being in place one month prior to its beginning. Nevertheless, all participants that had been announced showed up and there even was some operational flying activity by part of them, on the second Spottersday on Monday the 13th.

Do note that all the helicopters listed at the Sanicole Airshow under Static, and all aircraft seen there flying except for the A400 and Canso, were also at ‘KeeBee’ during at least one of these two days.

Of the two days, Monday turned out to be the better one in the end, if one ignores the French E-2 had already left by then. Part of the reason was the weather, being dull at best on Saturday and sunny most of Monday. The major reason though, was that a number of Tiger Meet participants, and flying display aircraft including spares, were parked in the forested area north of the runway, not visible to the spotters. On Monday, these came out of the woods so to speak, to either fly a mission or depart for home. The Airshow performers used the runway on Saturday too of course, but especially for small planes like the T-17s this marginalised the photo opportunities. That said, it was an event well-worth visiting again, and one of the few taking on the challenge of staging it while we are still being subjected to COVID-19 measures.

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