Three years after the last visit to Zagreb airport, official permission to visit the Croatian Air Force was still not in sight. This prompted the author to combine the visit to the CIAV airshow at Varaždin with a detour to Zagreb-Pleso. In Zagreb, where the new terminal has been completed, which (first impression) unfortunately offers no view of the airfield from either a terrace or the restaurants, a Croatian-British exercise was under way at the time of the visit, according to a (very short-notice) announcement on the website of the Croatian Ministry of Defence. This promised flight operations, and so a few pictures were to be taken from the edge of the airfield:
First there was waiting. With temperatures above 30°C, flights in the morning seemed most likely, but the website mentioned then announced flights of Eurofighters and MiG-21s from 11 a.m., so there was some waiting time to bridge – if need be with pictures of aircraft of local ...
... and neighbouring airlines.
Only makeshift protected from the heat in the shade, the author was startled by two Spanish F/A-18s, which landed at Zagreb for their participation in the CIAV and loudly announced their presence beforehand.
When the announced start of flying came, a Eurofighter took off – far too steeply to come close to the camera.
Then long anxious minutes of waiting passed until finally two MiG-21s – a bisD and a UMD – took off, unfortunately as a pair with such a large interval ...
... that only one aircraft fitted into the picture.
Then it was time to move to the approach and wait again, with test shots at airliners.
Finally the MiGs reappeared – in formation with the Eurofighter.
As it turned out later, the "training mission" was a photo shoot over Zagreb.
After the formation broke up, the Eurofighter landed first, ...
... easy to photograph thanks to its low landing speed.
The much faster MiGs were ...
... harder to catch ...
... from a comparatively unfavourable position, ...
... but fortunately came in to land individually, ...
... which at least doubled the chance of good pictures.
After landing it was back to the other side, from where the author was then driven away by airport security – which in the end did not matter, as no further flights took place.
