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Fay Rice and her dad, veteran Warbirds pilot Brett Emeny, after her first airshow display at the Thames Airshow in 2021.
Aerobatic pilot Fay Rice will honour her father Brett Emeny when she performs with the Red Stars team he founded at the Warbirds Over Wānaka International Airshow.
New Plymouth-based Emeny, who died earlier this year, was a legend of New Zealand aviation who had been involved with the New Zealand Red Stars Yak-52 aerobatic team since it was created more than 20 years ago.
It had been his idea to put a 12-ship display together for the Wānaka show at Easter 2024, to celebrate its return after the last two biennial shows were cancelled because of Covid-19 restrictions, organisers said.
Rice, also a member of the Red Stars, said her father had been discussing the display in the days before he died, and it would be very special to perform the routine in his honour.
“Dad was excited about the idea … so to be able to bring a dozen Yaks to Wānaka and have them all up in the air performing another world-first display is going to be something special.”
Warbirds Over Wānaka general manager Ed Taylor said the Red Stars were one of the crowd favourites at the air show.
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Taranaki pilot Fay Rice said performing her first loop with the New Zealand Yak Formation Team at a display in Thames after training with them for 13 years was a special moment.
“These guys continue to out-do themselves every air show and would not be out of place at any other top air show around the world,” he said.
Emeny was an “absolute legend” at Wānaka, he said.
At the last Warbirds Over Wānaka show, in 2018, he flew in the Red Stars team and also his Trojan and Vampire aircraft and the Catalina.
Nicole Johnstone/Stuff
Two Yak 52s take off during Warbirds Over Wānaka in 2016.
“He is sorely missed so to have the team perform this special routine in his honour will be a highlight of our show next Easter,” Taylor said.
The origins of the Red Stars went back to the early 1990s when a two-ship team would perform at small North Island air shows.
In 2018 the team made worldwide headlines with the world’s first-ever nine-ship loop by a piston-engine display team, in Wānaka.
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