MOSCOW, August 24 (RIA Novosti) – Rehearsals for Russia’s MAKS-2013 airshow which were scheduled for Saturday have been postponed until Sunday due to bad weather, organizers said Saturday.
Speaking to RIA Novosti on Saturday, a representative for the airshow’s organizers Aviasalon said that the rehearsals, which will be closed to the media, are now set for Sunday afternoon, weather permitting.
MAKS-2013 runs from August 27 through September 1, and organizers expect it to pull in over 100,000 visitors per day. One of the highlights will be aerobatic displays by Russia’s fifth-generation T-50 and Sukhoi Su-35S multirole fighter jets, their maker Sukhoi said Thursday.
Rehearsals had been scheduled for Saturday, but were delayed several times during the day over bad weather, the organizers said Saturday.
Before the organizers confirmed that the rehearsals would not proceed as planned on Saturday, Russian tabloid newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets cited its anonymous sources as saying that a series of technical failures had meant that none of the show’s much-praised “star attractions” managed to get off the ground.
The events organizers have not publicly commented on these suggestions, instead reiterating that the T-50 and Su-35S will perform at this year’s airshow, and that bad weather – including low visibility, dense cloud cover and storms – was the reason for the delay.
The T-50, currently undergoing tests in prototype form, made its first public appearance at MAKS 2011 two years ago.
