This year's air show is the culmination of 13 months' of preparation, whereas the very first air show back in 1993 was organised in just six weeks by the Malta Aviation Society.

Joe Ciliberti, the President of the Society, says that preparations are already underway for next year's show before a single plane has even landed for this year's edition.

"When the first air show was held in 1993, all it took was a simple phone call to the squadron leader. If he said okay then all was good. Things are much more complicated now. Now it has to be okayed by much higher ranking officers."

"I have already placed a bid for the Royal Air Force (RAF) for next year, as the bids closed on 15 September and if you miss that bid the RAF will not attend next year's show."

Mr Ciliberti first tried to sell the government the idea of holding an air show in Malta in the early 1980s.

He had approached then Foreign Minister Alex Scibberas Trigona, but the idea was shot down as having Malta play host to military planes was "taboo."

The first air show was held in 1992 over Manoel Island.

 "It was a learning process from there on, you think you have everything in place but then the unexpected happens."

"One time a marker buoy broke away. We had planned for this possibility and decided that an Armed Forces of Malta patrol boat should serve as a terms of reference instead for a Harrier jet."

"The Harrier started to hover over the patrol boat, pitching it from side to side. The patrol boat moved out of the way and the Harrier continued to use it as a marker. The captain then frantically got on the radio asking the Harrier to move."

Holding the air show over the sea was always a worry for Mr Ciliberti. In the past, air shows were held over both Sliema and Saint Paul's bay before migrating to Luqa.

"The closest we ever came to losing a plane was when the show used to be held over Sliema. It is very easy for a pilot to become disoriented between the sky and the sea. It is called controlled flight into terrain. You will think you are going up but you will actually be going down."

"This happened twice in the same air show. One pilot thought he was doing the display off the Sliema seafront and he was actually next to the Dragonara hotel a kilometre away."

"Another pilot mistakenly headed to the mouth of the harbour. These were experienced pilots, one was a chief instructor of the RAF's bulldogs, and the other was a Nimrod pilot. Nimrod's hunt submarines, therefore he was used to flying over the sea yet he still got it wrong."

"An airfield has clear defined borders. You have a strip of grey, green grass, good markings. Pilots are much more at ease over a defined line."