News

Jul 13, 2023

As The Tour De France Takes Off, Here’s How Aviation Brings It To The World

Broadcasts from the Tour de France are made possible by relay and aerial footage aircraft circling the skies above the race. This year’s Tour de France began on July 1st and will continue through July

Broadcasts from the Tour de France are made possible by relay and aerial footage aircraft circling the skies above the race.

This year’s Tour de France began on July 1st and will continue through July 23rd, with cyclists braving some of the toughest conditions. As the riders weave their way through the route’s often hilly – sometimes mountainous – terrain, viewers at home can watch continuous coverage of Tour de France’s cycling action.

While most viewers may not spend much time thinking about how signals make it from the race to their screens, the reality is that this is no simple feat. Unlike typical stadium-based sporting events, the Tour de France is, of course, spread out over more than 2,000 miles through France, making any sort of hard-wired signal connections nearly impossible.

Even sending remote signals poses major challenges, though, because especially on parts of the route that pass through hills or mountains, terrain features can block the passage of signals between ground-based camera crews and relay stations. That's where aviation plays a key role.

For many parts of the route, aviation serves as the key that makes the broadcast possible. Over the course of each stage, a fleet of motorcycles, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft follows the riders. Camera crews capture footage from the motorcycles and from low-altitude helicopters, which is then sent to relay aircraft that circle the area overhead. These aircraft then send the signals along to nearby production trucks where editorial decisions are made before the final production footage is sent out for distribution via satellites.

Utilizing aircraft as relay vehicles directly overhead helps to eliminate signal disruptions that would otherwise occur as a result of the route’s varied terrain. In order to guarantee coverage, at least two small, twin-engine aircraft, like the Beechcraft 200 Super King Air, take to the skies along with additional relay helicopters that fly closer to the ground.

Fixed-wing relay aircraft aiding the broadcast typically operate at two altitudes. The first of the fixed-wing aircraft usually flies at around 10,000 feet, while the second flies between 20,000 and 25,000 feet. Additional relay helicopters – usually an AS350 – typically fly much closer to the ground, usually at between 4,000 to 5,000 feet above ground level, although they sometimes operate at as low as 2,000 feet above ground level.

It is also worth noting that, beyond these, crews also utilize other aircraft to make the production possible – in particular, for aerial camera views.

In recent years, these have included two Eurocopter AS355s – now part of Airbus Helicopters. These helicopters carry a wide-angle Cineflex five-axis, gyro-stabilized exterior camera mounted on their nose. Also onboard are two long focal-length cameras, with one mounted on each side of the helicopter.

The AS355s generally fly up to 500 feet and down to almost ground level, sometimes as low as about one foot up. Special procedures have been developed with the French civil aviation authority that allows not only for such low flight, but also for lateral separation of just 500 feet between the helicopters and the course.

Were you aware of aviation’s vital role in producing and distributing footage from the Tour de France? How do you expect that its role might evolve over the coming years? Let us know in the comments below.

Matt's eyes have been turned to the sky for as long as he can remember. A former newspaper editor, Matt is a lifelong avgeek whose earliest memories include talking aviation with his grandfather, a retired US Air Force pilot. Matt has lived in Greece, Czechia, and Germany for studies and for work, and is currently based in the US, near Dallas. Matt recently took the plunge to become a pilot himself and is transitioning into an aviation career.