Farnborough International, Trade Show, UK 22-26 July 2024
This biennial exhibition has a long history. Until the 1970s it was solely for British built and powered aircraft and featured a busy week long air event incorporating numerous displays, both civil and military. Due to the increasingly international cooperation on design and production this then changed to include British aircraft that included foreign components. More recently, and partly due to the alternating Paris Air Show that welcomed Soviet inspired designs, the global aircraft industry has been welcomed. Although this year the Trade Show element was sold out in the many exhibition halls and business appeared to be booming the flying contents has reduced even further than in 2022.
The public weekend that used to showcase new products was removed in 2022. The opportunity to showcase the industry and its employment opportunities to the next generation was reduced to the final Friday, still at high admission prices. However, most of the flyable content and many of the exhibition stands have disappeared by then, being replaced with more general airshow items more often seen at affordable fly-ins and the like. Considering the luxurious chalets and exhibition infrastructure takes 18 weeks to build and almost ten weeks to dismantle this seems a little wasteful in this era of STEM and inspirational opportunities championed by Government.
This year the small static park was enhanced by a selection of American military aircraft symbolising and celebrating the unique relationship between the UK and USA. Some of this further stimulated by the 75th Anniversary of NATO so an F-35, two F-16s; a type celebrating a half century; P8A Poseidon and three military helicopters swelled the ranks.
Airbus rather than Boeing displayed two current airliners, particularly the increasingly popular A220, in JetBlue livery plus a new Virgin wide body. The A220 was created in Canada by Bombardier but adopted by Airbus and now attracting much interest. Meanwhile Bombardier enjoys considerable success with its Global Express series of large business jets. Business Aviation is booming globally and numerous movements could be seen at Farnborough where a major Gulfstream overhaul facility serves the market. Unfortunately, partly due to the popularity of dedicated business exhibitions like the NBAA Convention in Las Vegas and EBACE in Geneva, no new business jets were evident in the static or flying displays.
Although only a select few aircraft flew demonstration flights, two stood out. The Qatar Air Force had a four ship delivery of new F-15QA fighters that had featured at RIAT the week before. Two examples, one ‘clean’ and one carrying underwing stores were demonstrated superbly. The other was an Embraer KC-390 jet transport that is already in service in Brazil but now attracting orders in Europe and across the world as a slimmed down latest generation transport providing a compact and economic alternative to the C-17 and A400. An RAF A400 was on static display providing a size comparison.
Embraer also took the opportunity to show two versions of the successful E195 airframe, now available in passenger and freighter versions plus the very popular Tucano prop trainer that now serves with numerous air forces around the world.
It may be time to re-brand the Farnborough International Airshow (FIA) as merely a Trade Show and simply take advantage of the long and busy runway for demonstration flights rather than mislead the general public that they are welcome to see all that is new, often part funded by their taxes. There are certainly justifiable Air Traffic Control issues due to the proximity and alignment with London Heathrow.
