Royal Jordanian Falcons History
The team is formed in 1976, with the approval of his Majesty the late King Hussein Bin Talal, flying with two red-white painted Pitts Special-S2A planes. Later to the team is added third plane and in 1982 fourth and fifth plane.
In 1992 Royal Jordanian Falcons begin to fly with five Extra-300 planes and in 2007 with Extra-300L, but only four perform during air displays.
On 26 July 1997 during airshow in Ostenda, Belgium, one of the team members capt. Omar Bilal crashed and died, while performing solo display. Witnesses say that Bilal, after around 5 minutes in his performance, started a loop at very low level, apparently to close it very low, but had insufficient height to recover and pulled hard in a late attempt to avoid ground contact. Aircraft stalled and impacted the runway with high angle of attack, caught fire and skidded into a first-aid post and a stand crowded by spectators. Weather was reported cloudy, with wind gusting to 30Kts and intermittent rashes. Visibility and ceiling were OK for the display, and aircraft was apparently perfectly serviceable.
Since its creation, Royal Jordanian Falcons, performed in Asia, Europe, America and Far East.
The team is based on Aqaba Airport, also known as King Hussein International Airport. All of the team's planes use white smoke generators.
The team is not entirely military, but represents its country, so they are added in our military teams section. Most of team pilots are from Jordanian Air Force, but trough the years in the team flies hired civil aerobatic pilots.
