A Carefully Planned and Rehearsed Choreography

The display routine of the Midnight Hawks resembles a figure skater's choreography. Every single element and maneuver in the routine has been meticulously planned and thoroughly rehearsed. This ensures that the routine can be flown repeatedly in a manner that consistently demonstrates the team's skills and appeals even to an expert spectator's eye.

The Midnight Hawks aircraft may be only 1.5 meters apart in a tight formation. Photo: Air Force

 

The Midnight Hawks plans new routines for every season, taking into consideration the experience of the team's pilots in formation display flying, among other factors.

There are always two routines, one for good and moderate weather conditions, and the other for low cloud base, low visibility conditions. A poor weather routine largely dispenses with vertical maneuvers and maneuvering that would require considerable separation between aircraft. This will ensure that the crowd can maintain visual contact with the Hawks, and the aircraft will not inadvertently disappear in fog or clouds.

Practising for new routines starts at the team’s home plate at Kauhava during the fall that precedes the coming season and peaks during the spring with March and April being the most grueling training months.

Each pilot completes a dozen or so training sorties before the start of a season. Open days arranged every spring in Air Force units across Finland serve as venue for "dress rehearsals" and allow the Midnight Hawks to give the finishing touch to its routines.

Formation flying training starts with simple basic maneuvers and progresses towards the choreographed performance by the entire team. Team members start rehearsing for a new routine flying single-ship sorties. The next step is two-ship formations, and eventually the entire team joins to practise four-ship maneuvering at altitudes of over 1,000 meters. As the skill in flying the routines builds up, altitude is progressively lowered to the display height, which may be as low as 110 meters above the runway at the display aerodrome.

For detailed information of the Midnight Hawks display routine, go to the navigation panel on the left.

Last updated 02.04.2012