Date: Sept 8, 1998 From: Farnborough, Hampshire, England By: Arnie Lee

Farnborough '98 The Farnborough International Air Show is held every two years. This year the show dates are from September 7th thru 13th. If you live close by, or can make it the the greater London area, it's still not too late to visit. I journeyed to Farnborough in county Hampshire, a trip 50 miles west from London. The train ride from central London takes about an hour.

Please address any comments about this report to: Arnie Lee

The show is sponsored by the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) and is the largest aviation industry gathering of its kind in the U.K. SBAC has predicted that 130,000 trade visitors will attend from Monday thru Friday and an additional 160,000 public visitors will attend on Saturday and Sunday. This makes it the largest Farnborough Show ever where more than 400 companies have set up exhibits at the Farnborough Airport site. While the list of exhibitors is global, the U.K. companies far outnumber the others. Economic Importance of Aviation Farnborough is a very important show. In fact, it's so important that British Prime Minister Tony Blair opened the show on Monday and Queen Elizabeth II was attendence on Tuesday to demonstrate their support for the British aviation industry.

To put things in perspective, the U.K. aviation industry employs some 121,000 people and generates 15 billion Pounds. Furthermore British Aerospace has predicted that the upcoming Airbus A3XX (see model on right) is expected to produce 40,000 jobs among 400 U.K. companies and generate 20 billion Pounds in exports. No doubt about it, aviation is a vital part of the U.K. economic forumula.

Intense Global Competition
The primary purpose of the show is to encourage the sale of new aircraft. As you might expect, the talk of the show is the intense competition in the civil aviation sector between Boeing and Airbus Industrie. Airbus recently inked the largest deal ever to supply British Airways with 188 A320's valued at $8.5 billion. Airbus also announced a $900 million order for its A350-500 from Emirates Airlines based in Dubai.

Boeing announced several deals of its own totaling $2.4 billion - one to supply KLM with new B737-900s; another to supply International Lease Finance Co. a range of new 737, 757, 767 and 777 aircraft and a third to deliver Brazil's Varig Airline with 737s, 767s and 777s.

Separately, Brazil's Embraer SA won its largest order ever when it announced that American Eagle, the commuter line, will be flying 75 new ERJ-137 aircraft. The ERJ-137 is a 37-seat jet and the American Eagle order is worth some $1 billion.

Boeing is now advertising its new model 717, a 100-seat plane based on the MD-95 design inherited through its takeover of McDonnell-Douglas last year. The 717 made its maiden test flight last June and is scheduled to see service sometime in mid-1999. Not wanting to let Boeing get too far out in front, other airplane-makers have also announced 100-seat aircraft. Airbus revealed the A318, a cut-down version of its 124-seat A319. Fairchild Dornier announced a 90-seat aircraft earlier this year. Bombadier also unveiled plans for a 90-seat model

These 100-seat class aircraft are priced in the neighborhood of $26-$34 million each.

Military Aviation On the military side, one of the most interesting was the Eurofighter. The consortium which is making the Typhoon already has contracts for 620 of the "next generation" aircraft that will serve German, Italy, Spain and the U.K. Of course, part of the fun of going to an airshow is to see the planes in action and BAe test John Turner put it through its paces.

At 2PM each day, the talking inside the exhibition halls stops as the deafening sound of jet engines catapault these birds skyward. One of these birds was the sleek Swedish Gripen, made by Saab. Here we seeing it on final approach after a ten minute demonstration.

One of the neatest demos was performed by the USAF's C-17 Globemaster. This humongous aircraft can carry a quarter of million pounds of cargo to and from short fields.

The Flight Line Have you ever seen a whale that flies? Here's an Airbus transport which is nicknamed the "Beluga". It's used to transport Airbus wing assemblies from the U.K. to Toulouse, France.

Another aicraft getting a lot of attention was the Airbus 330. This beauty performed several slow flight maneuvers which made it appear to hang in the air.

What's This? This sleek craft was sitting outside one of the exhibition halls. I'm not sure what significance it has to the aviation industry, but this Playstation Vehicle might serve as a great flight simulation device.

...and this? Inside the exhibition hall I ran into this device which looks like one of your run of the mill joysticks that you can hook up to you PC for flight simulation. But the representative of Essex Industries in St. Louis, Missouri (USA) tells me that these are the real thing. This F-16 joystick goes for a few thousand dollars.

Whirly Birds

This Bell 609 isn't yet ready for prime time. However, when it becomes available in 2000, it will be able to take off and land vertically like a helicoptor. After takeoff, the 26' rotors will swivel and become propellers - they're called "Tilt rotors". It will have a top speed of about 280 knots and can operate at levels up to 25,000 feet.

These two helicoptors were grounded for a few days so that visitors could inspect them up close - a Lynx and a Merlin.

Meanwhile, back in town

Farnborough didn't have much flight sim news this year. But on the way back, I stopped at Transair Pilot Shop located near Victoria Station where James Davey and David Andreolety showed me their PC based simulation software.