The UK’s iconic Red Arrow jets and Typhoon fighter jets have been grounded for all but essential flights due to concerns over a potential safety issue with the ejection seats.
It meant the Red Arrows’ performance at the end of the Farnborough Air Show on Friday was cancelled.
Engineers are working hard to check a part in the ejector seat of each of the affected jets after the Royal Air Force was notified of what they described as a “technical problem”.
If no fault is found with the Red Arrows’ Hawk aircraft, the flying team could still take part in displays planned in Scotland and Ireland at the weekend, an RAF source said.
It is not clear how long it will take for engineers to inspect the UK’s larger fleet of Typhoon fighter jets before they are given the full go-ahead.
All training and exercises are suspended until this happens, but pilots using Typhoon jets on operations will continue to fly despite the risk.
This includes those tasked with the critical mission of protecting UK airspace from hostile threats and an operation out of Romania to guard the skies of Eastern Europe to deter Russian aggression.
“If any bad guys appear over the horizon, we’ll be ready to chase them down,” the RAF source said.
The RAF announced the extremely rare move to suspend non-essential flights in a post on social media site Twitter on Friday evening.
“We have been made aware of a technical issue which may affect the safe operation of our ejection seats on Typhoon and Red Arrows aircraft,” the RAF said.
“We have paused non-essential flights as a temporary precaution until the situation is better understood.”
The RAF has suffered a number of setbacks in recent days.
On Monday, the service had to suspend flights to and from Brize Norton, the UK’s largest military airbase, because the “runway melted” in the hot weather, according to a military source.
Earlier this month, the same thing happened to the flight line at another base – RAF Cranwell.
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