Meeting des Ailes de Cambrai 2024

The show is held at the Cambrai-Niergnies aerodrome, a field that exists because the Union aéronautique du Cambrésis went looking for a home of its own in 1932: its aircraft were then based at Douai and the club wanted its own ground. It settled on a large meadow beside the village of Niergnies, and the aerodrome was officially inaugurated in 1935. Almost a century later light aviation is still there, around the local flying club, which is named after Louis Blériot in tribute to the airman born in Cambrai on 1 July 1872 who crossed the English Channel in thirty-seven minutes on 25 July 1909 in his Blériot XI monoplane with its Anzani engine.

Cambrai also had a military link with the air for decades through air base 103, which closed in 2012. Since then the Niergnies field has been the Cambrésis region's major aviation gathering, and the Nord department describes the Ailes de Cambrai meeting as the most important air show north of Paris. It is held every two years.

The edition of Sunday 6 September 2015 was staged to mark the aerodrome's eightieth anniversary and was conceived as a tribute to the Tigers. It ran to more than six hours of flying and brought out historic machines including a Spitfire, a Mosquito and a PBY Catalina.

In 2022 the meeting returned on Sunday 4 September, organised by the Louis-Blériot flying club and dedicated to the seventieth anniversary of fighter squadron 1/12 "Cambrésis". Tickets cost eight euros in advance and ten on the day, free for under-twelves.

The 2024 edition took place on Sunday 1 September and was the largest of those documented: ninety-four aircraft were announced on the field and some fifty civil and military displays, with twenty thousand spectators expected. The headline acts were the eight Alphajets of the Patrouille de France and two Rafales of the Requin Mike pair; a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, a DC-3 Dakota, the Royal Jordanian Falcons, the Raven team, the Yakoteam and a large classic contingent (Stampe, Texan, Hawker Sea Fury, Boeing Stearman) also flew. The report on the show called it "un cru d'exception".

The 2026 edition breaks with the single-Sunday format and splits the meeting into two distinct shows, on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 September, each with its own atmosphere and its own programme. Around fifty civil and military aircraft are announced across the weekend.

Saturday is an evening and night event, capped at five thousand spectators and sold out before the show: static display in the afternoon and, from 16:45, a programme of nineteen items running from Piper Cubs to aerobatics and ending, as the light goes, in a dusk display at 20:26 with a glider ballet, the night flying of Britain's Global Stars and a finale of four hundred drones flown by Dronisos, a light show without precedent in the region.

Sunday is the long day: static display in the morning and twenty-six items between 11:00 and 18:30, a run that starts in the First World War, with a triplane against an SE5-A and a Nieuport 28, and ends with modern jets. Through the display line come the 3rd Combat Helicopter Regiment with Gazelle and Caïman, the army light aviation school with an EC120, the French Air and Space Force aerobatic team, a formation of three TB30s and two Pilatus PC-21s from the Cognac school, the Tora Tora Tora re-enactment, the Second World War fighters (Hurricane, Spitfire, P-51 Mustang and Junkers 52), the Normandie-Niémen Yak-3 pair, the Piper J3s of Les Oursons de Cambrai, a Fouga Magister CM 170 and the invited Swedish and Czech teams. The Patrouille de France takes the place of honour, and the show closes with "Les 400 ans de la Royale", the display of the Zéphir and the Rafale of French naval aviation.

Sunday tickets were sold at fifteen euros in advance and twenty at the gate, free for under-twelves and with parking included. The organising association, Les Ailes de Cambrai, chaired by Philippe Macé, began preparing this edition more than a year ahead.