BEagle, just to let you know, the Air Day is actually run by a civvy contractor (not sure how typical this is of other military airshows), but I agree that the current rate of commitments and operational deployments elsewhere did have an effect on the type and number of participants.
As an example, I know that the bloke who organised the assault at the end only finalised how many aircraft he was going to be able to use in the run up to the day. Jimgriff is right about the workrate required as the event approached! I'll pass on the sentiments.
Triple matched - there was supposed to be a Merlin from Culdrose, but they had to cancel for some reason. Not sure why.