Otelli’s team

The Royal Moroccan Air Force aerobatic team traces its origins to Jean-Pierre Otelli, a French aerobatic competitor teaching in Agadir, whom the Moroccan authorities asked in 1983 to form a military display team. He began with four FFA AS 202 Bravo trainers, which had no smoke and flew only a few displays in Morocco, then moved the team to two Mudry CAP 10 in 1986 and named it Marche Verte after the Green March of 6 November 1975. Moroccan press and La Dépêche date the founding to 1984; Morocco World News and English-language references give 1988.

Tied together

Successive CAP 230, CAP 231 and CAP 232 aircraft followed, and the team grew from two to seven aircraft. Its signature is the formation take-off with the aircraft linked by cords, which they keep through the first manoeuvres before the cords break at the first split; aerobaticteams.net puts the roped segment at about seven minutes of a 23-minute display. The pilots also fly a mirror loop, one aircraft upright and the other inverted directly above it, and a five-aircraft flat spin.

Marrakech and the CAP 232

The team is based at Marrakech and flies in red, green and yellow with white smoke, supported by a CASA CN-235. It appears regularly in Europe: at Airexpo, Muret-Lherm, in 2015 seven CAP 232 under Colonel Abdelhakim Sebaï drew a “palm tree of Marrakech” in smoke. At the Marrakech Air Show 2024 the team closed the flying and traced the number 25 for the 25th anniversary of King Mohammed VI’s accession.