Whether its your first or 40th visit to The Royal International Air Tattoo in 2025, fans can expect to find familiar favourites, some entirely new and some 'bigger, better, brighter' attractions when they touch down at RAF Fairford this summer.
Organised by the enterprise arm of the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust, the RIAT team works year-round to plan each event, putting a unique spin on a familiar format with new aircraft, display teams, special guests, expanded attractions and refined hospitality offerings.
SoGlos sits down with Gavin Gager, finance director at RIAT, to find out what's new for this year – along with how the event funds UK-wide activity to inspire young people to develop their skills in STEM.
Gavin, tell us why you’re gearing up for a special RIAT in 2025.
This summer marks 40 years since the Air Tattoo first touched down at RAF Fairford, after originally being founded in 1971 by Tim Prince and Paul Bowen where it took place at North Weald Airfield then RAF Greenham Common, before coming to RAF Fairford. Naturally, this is huge cause for celebration for us.
Amazingly, we have a few aircraft attending this year that also came to the show in 1985, including one of the Red Arrows. We are also planning on having a large presence on the show ground which features a memory wall of images, as well as timelines about our time with RAF Fairford.
What’s new at the airshow for this year?
With our theme of ‘Eyes in the Skies’ this year we are exploring the role aviation plays in a range of different areas such as aerial surveying, airborne early warning, maritime patrol, search and rescue, reconnaissance, signals intelligence and surveillance – so there is plenty for our visitors to have a look at.
As well as a plethora of enclosure options to suit all budgets, we are really excited to be launching a new enclosure this year called Altitude which is located at the heart of the showground, perfect as a base to browse the static aircraft from, as well as a great spot to watch the flying displays.
Altitude offers something completely different with upper deck viewing spaces and a cool, contemporary vibe, as well as an all-inclusive cocktail bar with selected wine, prosecco, beer, cider, spirits, cocktails and soft drinks and complimentary food served throughout the day. Once the flying display has finished, the festivities continue with an exclusive DJ music set in the enclosure.
The airshow attracts huge number of visitors to Gloucestershire every year – what do you think it is about RIAT that keeps people coming back?
We are incredibly lucky to have visitors who come back to see us year after year, we even have some who have brought their children, they’ve then grown up and then they bring children of their own. Having said that, we are also attracting new visitors; in 2024 nearly a third of our visitors came to see us for the first time.
Only at RIAT can you see so many aircraft from different parts of the world. Last year we had almost 250 aircraft, some of which were incredibly fast jets, whilst others performed more unusual tasks such as British Antarctic Survey’s Twin Otter, which is used to collect scientific data in the world’s harshest environment.
All profits from RIAT are donated back to the RAF Charitable Trust each year – tell us a bit about the Trust and why its work is important.
The work of our parent charity is really important. They do incredible work to reach children and young people across the country and inspire them to reach their full potential in air, space and technology.
At the moment the team are working with 13 different partners, who deliver hands-on engineering, science and tech experiences, opportunities to chat with real life engineers and STEM professionals and lessons in primary and secondary schools up and down the UK, as well as supporting flying training and engineering scholarship. This year they will reach more than 300,000 young people.
Lastly, what are you most looking forward to about RIAT 2025?
For me I always look forward to seeing our guests enjoy the show. As part of the team, we work on the event all year round, so when we finally get to July all of our hard work culminates into a singular week.
It’s a lot of pressure to put on a good event and we have an enormous reputation to uphold, but seeing people come and enjoy their time with us is a special feeling which I always look forward to.
From an event point of view, we love being able to see aircraft from all over the world share the stage at RAF Fairford as well as our incredible attractions on the ground like our static line-up and Techno Zone®, which has doubled in size since last year. There’s plenty to do for all the family!
