Hunters at Expo 64

The idea of a Swiss formation team dates to 1959, when the professional Surveillance Squadron was asked to train a four-ship of Hawker Hunters for demonstrations. The Patrouille Suisse was formally founded on 22 August 1964, the name emerging around the Expo 64 national exhibition and echoing the Patrouille de France. Its pilots have always been serving fighter pilots who fly with the team alongside their operational duties, and the team has been based at Emmen throughout its history.

Thirty years of the Hunter

The Hunter remained the team’s aircraft for three decades. The first full season, with four displays, was flown in 1965. In 1968 the team briefly tried the Dassault Mirage IIIS, flying only two displays before returning to the Hunter. A fifth aircraft was added in 1970 and a sixth soon after; smoke generators followed in 1977. The first display abroad took place at Salon-de-Provence in 1978, and in 1979 the team won the Shell Trophy at the International Air Tattoo. The last Hunter display was flown at Nancy on 25 September 1994.

The Tiger era

From 1995 the team has flown the Northrop F-5E Tiger II, painted in red and white with the Swiss cross on the undersides; smoke systems were fitted from 1996. Six aircraft fly the display, drawn from a pool of twelve F-5Es in team colours, and a Pilatus PC-6 Porter has supported the team since 1997. On 7 September 2014, during the Air14 show at Payerne marking the fiftieth anniversary, it flew a fifteen-aircraft formation with the PC-7 Team.

Leeuwarden and Baar

The team has had no fatal accident. On 9 June 2016, while training for the Leeuwarden air show in the Netherlands, two F-5Es touched: J-3086 crashed into a pond near Bitgum after the pilot ejected safely, while J-3088 landed with tail damage. Investigators blamed pilot error, and the pilot was convicted in 2022. On 15 June 2023 two aircraft made contact during a rehearsal over Baar; a nose cone fell onto a house and one person was injured, but both jets landed.

Countdown to 2027

The team’s future has been debated since 2013, when disbandment was first proposed. In 2025 the Swiss Air Force halved its display programme and made appearances abroad exceptional, and in September 2025, following Parliament’s decision to retire the F-5 Tiger fleet by the end of 2027, it confirmed that the Patrouille Suisse would stop flying the Tiger by then and that the turboprop PC-7 Team would take over as the national aerobatic team. The 2026 and 2027 seasons are therefore the last planned for the jet team.