80th Anniversary Battle Of Britain Airshow Weekend (CANCELLED! Dates TBA)

[Nick]

Now CANCELLED. And I suspect rather a telling decision for the rest of the UK & European 'season.'

It is with great sadness that we have taken the decision to cancel the Duxford Battle of Britain Proms and the 80th Anniversary Battle of Britain Air Show 2020. We were looking forward to the Air Show as much as the thousands of visitors who had bought tickets for what promised to be a brilliant weekend.

We have been working tirelessly with our partners including Public Health England and South Cambridgeshire District Council in order to explore all avenues for hosting the event. However, we take our responsibility for the safety of our visitors and local community very seriously and feel it would be irresponsible to continue with the event in this rapidly-changing climate.

We are devastated to have to take this decision, and want to thank our visitors, supporters, partners neighbours and staff members for their incredible support over the past few days and weeks. IWM, like many other museums across the country, is under significant financial pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic so it is a huge blow to have to cancel one of our biggest events less than a week before it takes place. We are confident that our visitors, partners and supporters understand we would not have taken lightly a decision of this magnitude.

We are hugely sorry about the disruption that this cancellation will cause for everyone. We will be in touch with everyone who has purchased a ticket to offer refunds and options to donate your ticket to IWM or consider membership opportunities with access to a host of benefits including free entry to all IWM sites and much more for a whole year.

We promise to return with a packed programme for our next Air Show season and will release details about our 2021 programme in due course.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support for IWM.

https://twitter.com/IWMDuxford/status/1 ... 7774638081

I can see eye to eye that Europe season may be (unoffically) over for this year. Espically with the New COVID Rules in place.

[Adam]

To be honest, we've been very lucky to have such an extensive season this year, with 8 mainland UK shows in the last 10 weeks (two rained off) in an area smaller than Rhode Island. That's a pretty damn impressive figure, I think - and given that, I won't be too gutted at all if things end here and now.

BUT - it's almost certainly not over yet. There are still 6 shows on the cards, of which 3 are drive-ins and therefore reasonably safe from Covid-restrictions. The other three are conventional shows, and as I said yesterday, the law regarding Covid-secure events in the UK has not changed recently. Admittedly, I didn't expect that IWM would cancel this show regardless, and I suppose the other three non-drive-in shows could yet face the same fate, but that's far from a given and there's every chance that one or more still go ahead. So, best case scenario, we're only half done, with the biggest show of the year still to come. In fact, tonight, there are roughly as many shows still selling tickets as there usually would be at this point in the year, which is only couple of weeks from the usual season end anyway. It's not all doom and gloom, we've already had as good a year as anywhere else, and who knows, there could be some real highlights still to come.