I wasn't at Waddington but I was at Biggin Hill a week or two back, where the lighting was tricky for much of the afternoon. My solution is to shoot manual, spot metering off the brightest part of the sky against which I intend to shoot and setting the meter needle at +3. That will place the sky at the highlight clipping point and allow me to capture as much detail as I can from the plane without losing the sky. Then it's down to post processing to make the thing look nice.
Here's an example....
You will see in the original that I have a little clipping in the sky, but something which can easily be recovered. However, the plane looks washed out and overexposed, although I have not lost any important image data. In fact I have captured as much as possible. With some minor edits I've revealed the little detail that was in the sky and created contrast and shape in the plane.
This is a technique I use a lot when shooting into or against the sky, whether for birds in flight, planes or anything else. I do have to keep on top of changing lighting, but I still find this approach superior to metering off the subject and having to constantly fiddle with EC as the plane twists and turns, and the sky changes brightness, and the plane shrinks or grows in the viewfinder.
It's worth noting that metering at +3 works well for Canon cameras when shooting raw. If shooting JPEG, or with another brand, you may need to be less aggressive with the metering, maybe aiming for aorund +2 to +2.3 instead of +3.
