When the first Eurofighter Instrumented Production Aircraft (IPA1) arrives at Farnborough today for its official naming ceremony, it will be met and escorted in by the second prototype (DA2), which is based at Farnborough for the week as the display aircraft.
Seeing two Eurofighters in the air together has been extremely rare, but show-goers today will have an even more unusual treat, as (if flight test commitments permit) Eurofighter plans to send two further Eurofighter Typhoons to escort IPA1, culminating in a flypast by a unique four-ship formation of Typhoons. IPA1 and DA2 will then land at Farnborough, while the remaining pair of aircraft will fly back to BAE Systems' Warton aerodrome in north-west England and to the MBB facility at Manching in southern Germany.
Crewed
DA2 will be flown by Eurofighter's Chris Wörning, while IPA1 will be crewed by Craig Penrice and Wing Commander DC ‘Charley' Chan, OC designate of 17 Squadron, the RAF's Typhoon Operational Evaluation Unit. The other two aircraft will be DA1, flown by Heinz Spolgen and DA4, which will be crewed by Mark Bowman and Squadron Leader Brian Kemp.
Eurofighter adopted the Typhoon name for export aircraft at Farnborough in 2000, and it has been expected for some time that the RAF would also adopt the name, reviving the name of the famous wartime Hawker fighter-bomber.
Source: Flight Daily News
