Recent Military Plane Activity in Switzerland?

Question

Hi, After spending a week and a half in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland, I noticed that there were quite a few Swiss military planes flying over. Some were quite low and others were very high, but all were very noisy.

1. What is all the activity for?

2. Has anyone visited the area between the 17th - 30th August and heard/seen these planes.

Answer 1

Don't know about Switzerland but there were reports yesterday of two heavy lift aircraft and 6 yes 6 Euro fighters over Milton Keynes England. The two heavy lift aircraft represent one third of UK capacity and 6 Euro fighters seems a bit extreme especially as this area does not normally have RAF activity. Time to kiss our respective @rses goodbye?

Answer 2

Don't panic, those are just regular training flights of the Swiss airforce! They even have a big airport not far from where you just have been. It's in Meiringen. I must not have visitied the area between 17th - 30th August to know, they fly all year round. So again, no reason to worry.

Answer 3

I used to live in Bern. It's quite normal for them to fly training flights because the terrain is good practice.

I wonder if you realized that half of the mountains around there are full of military hardware?

Not bad for a neutral country.

I hope you went up in the train to the Jungfraujoch. It may not be there much longer because the glacier is melting and they actually have to refrigerate it!

Answer 4

The Russians said, "your bases are belong to us."

Answer 5

For your first question:

1.The main reason ist general training and regular air-police tasks.

2.Additionaly, the swiss Airforce is currently testing serveral potential replacements for the aging F5-E Tigers, since their livespan comes to an end. (For security reasons, each part of an airplane has a certain livespan, countetd in flighthours. Once reached, it has to be replaced...that also applies for the very frame of an airplane.)

Therefore, there's some additional activity up there.

For your second question:

As Mr. Who pointed out, this is nothing special in that area of switzerland since one of the three main jet-airports is near the Jungfrau.

Plus there actually isn't much space left for military training in switzerland. Infact, arround three thirds of the aviable Airspace is being used for civilian flightroutes with leaving the military some spots in the alps to train...or abroad.

Trainingflights however are only being done during "office hours", so your weekends aren't going to be disturbed ; )

Matt