A campaign to save Yorkshire's last great air show is taking off after organisers pleaded for help from 25,000 visitors.

The Red Arrows fly into the Elvington air show

The most successful ever Elvington air show ended last night with shocked visitors told that it may also be the last.

Disgusted organisers issued the warning after discovering that plans have been drawn up showing the airstrip divided into zones for sale.

The future of the air spectacular - the only one left in Yorkshire - is in doubt as the Ministry of Defence looks for a way to dispose of the runway at Elvington.

At the weekend, organisers broadcast appeals to the show's record 25,000 visitors - 5,000 on Saturday, 10,000 on Sunday and slightly more on Monday - to join the campaign to save it.

The MoD has decided to sell off the 400-acre Bomber Command airstrip, and about 25 groups and organisations are thought to be interested in buying it.

The trustees of the Yorkshire Air Museum, who are themselves putting together a consortium to make a bid, have been alarmed to discover plans showing the airstrip divided up into zones.

Dave Tappin, events organiser, said the trustees saw the drawings at the weekend when an official from the MoD's estate agent visited the show.

Mr Tappin said splitting the runway up would spell disaster. "It is absolutely disgusting. Words fail me that they could even think of doing that. Everybody on the committee was just horrified.

"We are having the most successful air show ever, people are all enjoying themselves and the idea that it could be the last one just appals me. It's an awful thought that it could die."

Organisers used loudspeakers to urge the crowds to write to the MoD's land department at Catterick Garrison, Catterick, North Yorkshire, in support of keeping the runway available.

Mr Tappin said: "We want people to swamp them with letters and tell them how disgusting they think it would be if we lost it."

Elvington is the last Yorkshire air show after Church Fenton, Leeming, Finningley and Breighton all wound up.

Mr Tappin added: "We were a minnow when we started in 1990, compared with other Yorkshire air shows, but one by one they have fallen by the wayside."

He said the alternative of hiring an RAF base for future air shows was prohibitively expensive. "It could be done but it would cost everybody a fortune. At Elvington we have a reasonably priced show and it is very successful," he said.

Visitors to the air show also backed the campaign.

Len Whalley, an architect from Stockport who visited the air show on Sunday, said: " It would be a deliberate vandalistic act."

Alan Wood, 46, of Dringhouses, said: "There is nothing left in the North East. We have got too many shopping and office developments and don't need another one - especially not here."

Steve Sugden, 40, of Allerton Bywater, near Leeds, said: "It would be a real shame. We would have to travel a long way to find something as good as this."

A spokeswoman for Henry Butcher, the agent handling the sale on behalf of the MoD, could not confirm whether plans existed for zoning the site but said no decisions had been taken on the airfield's future.

She said: "We will not know what people are proposing to do with it until some time after the September 25 deadline for declarations of interest."

The MoD was aware of the airfield's current leisure use, she said, and had asked bidders to state whether and how they would accommodate this.

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