An Open Letter to the Swiss Military (Who Cancelled My Airshow) by Sylvia Wrigley, age 56 1⁄2

Dear Swiss Military People,

I have just discovered that you have cancelled the Axalp Live-Firing Demonstration for 2025 and I need a moment to process this betrayal.

A year ago, I hiked up an Alpine mountain to watch the Swiss Air Force’s famous live-firing exercise.

Ever since, I’ve been drafting the perfect letter to convince you to give me VIP access to the Axalp event in 2025. I have agonized over every word, carefully crafting my credentials and counting exactly how many helicopters I waved at while hiking up your mountain (seventeen, in case you are wondering).

I am an aviation writer and enthusiast with over ten years of experience. I am also a private pilot, rated for single engine, complex, and night flight, which makes me perfectly qualified to tell a fighter pilot how to do his job.

I have never been in a helicopter.

I hoped that you might consider me specifically because of my language abilities which are perfectly suited to Switzerland: I speak English and German, and I’ve learned a little bit of Italian from Inspector Montalbano. Unfortunately, he never had a case that involved an airfield, so I don’t know any useful phrases for an airshow unless you can arrange for a convenient murder for me to solve.

I took 1,757 photographs at Axalp 2023, although to be fair, that includes the thirteen I took on the way to Brienz.

I wrote five separate articles about the experience:

• Axalp Fliegerschiessen Demonstration 2023 (Detailed write-up of the event)

• A Mountain of Mistakes (Struggling on the hike down)

• I met a man on a steam train (What makes for good travel writing?)

• Brienzer Rothorn Bahn (Steam train fun when the airshow was cancelled on day three)

• Swiss Cheese Security (My mozzarella mishap at Zurich Airport)

While I was struggling to get to the summit of Tschingel while watching the Cougar helicopters flying the press and VIPs up to the shooting range, I realized that I’d be 57 for the next demonstration in 2025 and that in all of my 57 years, I have never once in my life been in a helicopter. And it seemed to me that the Swiss armed forces would probably love to have all one-and-a-half meters of me clambering into one of their airships to take me up to Ebenflüh KP to watch the airshow.

Also, I felt that I should remind you that in 2023, you were literally forming a search party to find me by the time I stumbled my way down the mountain only minutes before the final bus back to Brienz. You could save everyone time, money and stress by just offering me helicopter transport for next time, rather than mobilizing your military to rescue me again.

As a trial run for writing a letter to you begging for special access, I wrote the organizers of the Baltic International Air Show and asked for VIP tickets and they said yes! This led to three further articles (although I do wish that I hadn’t needed to write the middle one!)

• More than you ever wanted to know about Baltic International Air Show 2024 (Detailed write-up of the airshow)

• How to tell an F-16 Fighting Falcon from a Eurofighter Typhoon (Follow-up article after I misidentified a Eurofighter Typhoon as an F-16)

• Drunk at the Riga Market (10am moonshine on the way home)

But now, just as I was telling myself I really must write this letter before it was too late, I discovered that you have canceled the 2025 Axalp Fliegerschiessen Demonstration. In fact, it is possible that there will not be another airshow until 2028 and my god, people, I will be sixty! I might be dead.

I really wish you would reconsider.

Failing that, here’s my final offer: fly me to Meiringen (maybe in your Citation?) for a visit to the Meiringen Air Base. Take me into the aircraft caverns. Introduce me to an F-18 Hornet. Let me at least sit in a Eurocopter Cougar for a photo opp. And maybe give me the phone number of the cute paratrooper who waved at me at the air show–or more appropriately, perhaps his mother’s Züpfe recipe?

If I wrote five articles as the result of a three-day trip to Brienz, just imagine what I might write with a week at Meiringen! And if you do consider me for VIP tickets in 2026, I’ll have all my background research already done.

Love and kisses (especially for that paratrooper)

Sylvia

PS: I am of course available for any last-minute 2025 events, just in case you change your mind.

PPS: I promise that by 2028 I will have perfected my Schwizertütsch or at the very least will have learned how to say “please don’t send a search party”.

PPPPPPS: If all else fails, I’m prepared to stand at the base of the mountain yodeling “Danger Zone” until you reconsider. Don’t test me on this.

Readers keep me going! For more like this, please