BREITLING JET TEAM - 18th Hot Air Balloon Festival

The Hot Air Balloon festival showcases unique hot air balloons design, but just in case you miss out the actual launch of hot air ballons, don’t fret as experienced by Rai Avenir, who missed the hot air balloons but was just in time for the Breitling Jet Team. The Breitling Jet Team is the largest aerobatics team performing on jets, flying seven Aero L-39 Albatros jets. Here is the experience by Rai Avenir.

We left Manila at 430AM and passed thru NLEX and SCTEX. Unfortunately, traffic was encountered near the exit of NLEX Pampanga area took us 30+ mins. After that SCTEX was a breeze but heavy traffic build up approaching Petron Clark station, due to large volumes of cars and also parking spots.

During the Breitling Air show, the commentator was teasing the crowd to the sounds of figther jet engines starting up in the DMIA runway beside the field. It so happened that the Breitling airshow is the only civilian air show crew that uses fighter jets for their shows. There was a delay of 5 mins as a commercial air liner as lined up to land in the runway, further teasing / frustrating the crowd.

So it begins, the Breitling Jets showing in the horizon coming towards the crowd with light flashing to the delight of the crowd. Then split off and circled the air to show off different squad formations. As I recall they made 3 I think before going into air stunts. After the formations, they began to show off their stuff by making making barrel rolls while flying low, 1 plane rolling over a complete squad formation, the heart pounding head-to-head pass-by from two jets splitting only at the last second, two jets separating from the main group and met the rest head on.

Then they made their last low altitude formation to wave good bye to the crow and flew off to the distance to make their final stunt - climbing and gaining altitude while splitting into 6 different ways while releasing smoke and flares...vanishing off into the blue.

Bugger

• Unfortunately there were some people holding up tablets which hindered other peoples vision

Tips

• I'd say that people planning to go next year should leave the house really early maybe 3-4am if they want to catch the early flight of the balloons and also to anticipate traffic. Actually if there was no speed limit in NLEX and SCTEX, we would have made it earlier (hehe!).

• I'd suggest that you don't bring food since there are food booths in the area.

• Also go to the restroom in advance since there was a really long line for the women.

• Lastly, park somewhere far from the event proper to avoid traffic after the event, it took us close to an hour just to get out of Clark

Team San Tayo? Kahit Saan! For this Event

Ryan Avenir is a businessman and the owner of Timothy Scotch, who during at free time, enjoys taking pictures and travelling to various local spots

San Tayo? 18th Hot Air Balloon Festival feat. Breitling Jet team

Location : Clark Freeport Zone
When : February 24, 2013 ; 6:00AM
Website :
Hot Air Balloon Festival : http://www.philballoonfest.net/
Breitling website : http://www.breitling-jet-team.com/