Was persuaded to take the family to Lytham seafront, Lancashire, England, UK today.

I had forgotten, but the spot where we were eating our lunch was  about 1k from the  end of runway 26 of the British Aerospace factory at Warton (EGNO ) .

Suddenly a couple of Eurofighter Typhoons appeared climbing very steeply out of Warton out over the Irish sea, but parallel to us. From the crackling roar that they made , I am sure they were using afterburners. Although I could not see any flames, probably due to the bright sunshine.

I was under the impression that afterburner take offs are only normally used in an emergency or on operations ( it certainly shook this quiet seaside town and I can't imagine that this sound level would be tolerated on a continuing basis).

I suppose it could have been engine tests after repair/maintenance   
as Warton does this kind of work.

Does anyone have any comment?

If they use burner routinely at Warton I imagine it would be in the same fashion as the Tornado whene the burner is normally disengaged soon after leaving the runway. Typhoon is so high powered I'd expect it to use similar operating procedures (otherwise unless it climbed very steeply it'd be supersonic in no time at all!). The EJ200 is a loud engine though, so I expect it was just using normal power, but it could have been reheat...

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Probably a broken radio or a dozy pilot...

In holland they have to publicly apologise after they do an intercept, or else the angry letters flood in. What a change from the starfighter days...

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LMAO no commment