“Due to the limited space available, the measures necessary for the protection of the public from COVID-19 cannot be observed in the context of the flight performances of the Swiss Air Force on the Axalp. The DDPS therefore canceled this year’s edition scheduled for 13 and 14 October 2020” with these words, the Swiss DDPS – “Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport” announced the cancellation of the expected event of Swiss Air Force gun shooting exercises.
“Axalp Flugvorführungen der Schweizer Luftwaffe” (Axalp – Flight demonstrations of the Swiss Air Force) takes place every year in October over the Bernese Alps in Switzerland in Axalp bei Brienz.
The splendid scenery of the Alpine mountains overlooking the valley where the Aare river flows into Lake Brienz, hosts a real natural theater of sheer walls that has offered an excellent training ground for Swiss aviation since 1942. Axalp has seen the De Havilland Vampire and Venom, the Hawker Hunters, the Dassault Mirages and also the BAE Hawks of the Swiss Air Force fly and shoot in its mountains, in recent years the Northrop F-5 Tiger II, which have made their last shooting practice in 2018, and the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C/D Hornet. But there were also special guests such as the Dassault Mirage F1CR from French Armee de l’Air and also the Swedish Saab Gripen.
The presence of thousands of people who, through the structures made available by the Swiss army, “climb” above the Bernese mountains has a very difficult management under normal conditions and in the current medical situation, due to a further increase in the number of people infected with Covid19, does not it would be possible to prevent frequent contacts between people who often come from many countries of the world. 2020 is proving to be an increasingly complicated year for all the events, for all the populations who have had and will still have to give up the normal course of their lives.
The various governments try in every way to avoid a further spread of the disease before a vaccine helps to defeat it definitively, but for now a lot of the work and sacrifice is due to the individual people to all of us who must try to follow all the measures for the our health and protection.