| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Air show rolls out in Paris
By Nick Easen
(CNN) -- The Paris Air Show may have less U.S. participation this year; it may be battling with economic and geo-political uncertainty, as well as the fall-out from the SARS epidemic, but the show must go on. This Sunday the biggest and longest running event in the aviation, aeronautics and space calendar will open its doors at Le Bourget for the 45th time. However, some are saying there is little to shout about this year. "The airline industry is going through its largest crisis ever," Jean-Marc Fron of the Boeing Corporation told CNN. "We are not expecting anything exciting to come out of this year's show," he reiterates. Orders and deals are normally brokered weeks or months before the show and are then broadcast with fanfare at Le Bourqet next week. Yet these announcements normally have a significant impact on companies, stock market shares and jobs for months to come. "Usually we don't meet with customers on the Monday and make announcements on the Thursday. It's a long drawn out sales campaign." Fron told CNN. The organizers may say that this year's Paris Air Show (PAS) has escaped unscathed from the current unfavorable economic and political climate, yet it will be hard pushed to match the buying extravaganza two years ago. In 2001 there were 1,856 exhibitors from 41 countries, companies struck $63 billion in deals and strutted their stuff for more than 300,000 visitors, according to the show's Web site. Usual suspectsThe usual competition between arch-rival plane makers Boeing and Airbus Industries will again rear its head as they vie for orders at this year's show. (Airbus-Boeing rivalry hots up). A joint promotion by Boeing and AOL Time Warner to name the 7E7 airplane will end on Sunday when the name is announced. The site collected more than 65 million Web hits and about 280,000 votes from people in more than 140 countries. The leading candidates so far being "Global Cruiser," followed closely by "Dreamliner." (Name your plane) This year, U.S. resentment over France's staunch opposition to the war in Iraq means that there is less participation from the U.S. Defense Department. (US row clouds Paris Air Show) Yet with the end of the second Gulf War, defense is still on people's minds. The show will be the first to highlight unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs after they provided unparalleled intelligence during the U.S. led strike on Iraq. UAVs range from the Global Hawk with wings as wide as a Boeing 737 to miniature vehicles the size of toasters. Concorde supersonic loopThe show, which runs from June 15 to 21, will highlight milestones in the first 100 years of flight. 2003 is the Centennial Anniversary of the Wright brothers' monumental 59-second flight on December 17, 1903. It will also see Concorde do its last supersonic loop before it is retired to the museum at Le Bourget. Although the show in 1991 saw telecom and communication companies scaling back sky-high expansion plans, hi-tech is now back. For the first time Appear Networks will demonstrate wireless Wi-Fi communication between an aircraft on the ground and a maintenance operator. Both Qatar and Emirates Airways are also set to announce a spending spree by ordering dozens of Airbus and Boeing aircraft this year. The orders from Emirates could top $12 billion. (Emirates 'to order 69 jets') These days some aviation companies are spreading any good news of orders out over the year rather than waiting for PAS. This is undoubtedly done to try and offset gloom and doom stories that regularly cloud the industry at present. "We have a new policy of making order announcements when they come, the Paris Air Show is really only one week in 52," says Fron.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
