@ San Francisco, CA
October 2025
One of the performers at the 2025 San Francisco Fleet Week airshow were the Sukhoi West Demo Team, a premier civilian aerobatic duo featuring pilots Randy Howell and Cory Lovell, who are also members of the California-based Patriots Jet Team. They fly a pair of matching Sukhoi Su-26M aircraft, one of the first planes to be built primarily with high-strength composite materials. Renowned for its extreme agility and a roll rate exceeding 400 degrees per second, the airframe is engineered to withstand structural loads ranging from +12G to -10G. The Sukhoi Design Bureau designed the Su-26 in 1983 for unlimited aerobatic competition. The Su-26M is made of more than 50 percent composite materials and has a special symmetrical wing section and arched cantilever titanium landing gear.
