One of the highlights of the Platinum Jubilee weekend will be a large flypast over central London on Thursday 2nd June, featuring aircraft from the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force.
The flypast will start in the vicinity of The Wash, The North Sea and Southwold, Suffolk and Southend then route from the hold via Swaffham and Thetford and Colchester towards London to overfly Buckingham Palace.
The flypast over Buckingham Palace will be at 1pm, following the Trooping the Colour ceremony, which this year takes place on Thursday instead of Saturday. The usual route over London — but to be confirmed — is that the planes approach from the east, forming up over Stratford and Shoreditch before flying over the City of London and lining up for a flypast along The Mall.
After the planes have flown over Buckingham Palace, the dispersal will occur to the south and west of the London Control Zone over Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.
There’s always a flypast of sorts on the Queen’s official birthday, but this year’s flypast is going to be much larger than usual. So much so that rather than just issuing a notice to air traffic to avoid the area, the government has issued a larger flying restriction over the route of the flypast.
In total, it’s expected that over 70 aircraft, including the Red Arrows, will take part in the display — which is about three times larger than a traditional Queen’s Birthday flypast. As well as the most recent aircraft in the military, it will also include historic aircraft from the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Ahead of the flypast, there will be rehearsals.
These will be taking place between 10:50am and noon on 24th, 26th and 27th May 2022, and if you’re where they take place, will be a sight worth looking out for. The rehearsals will start in the vicinity of The Wash, The North Sea and Southwold, Suffolk and Southend then route via the overhead of RAF Marham, Norfolk and overfly RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire. The dispersal will occur over North Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire.
