Farnborough International Airshow 2018

 

Located 30 miles West of London, Farnborough is the spiritual home of aviation within the United Kingdom since 1904 when the Army Balloon Factory was established on the then Farnborough Common and Samuel Cody built and flew biplanes as long ago as 1906. Since then Farnborough became the primary site for experimental flying, through the creation of the Royal Aircraft Establishment such achievements as test evaluation of captured German aircraft designs, Concorde and many innovations to aircraft technologies and safety.  It is due to this background in innovation and design that the Farnborough Airshow was created in the 1940s as the primary showcase for the UK aviation manufactures. This soon opened up to international manufactures and has become one of the leading trade shows for the world’s aeronautical industry both in terms of aircraft and their supply chain of goods and services.

 

Trade days

The first four days of the airshow are devoted to the aeronautical trade where behind closed doors deals are brokered between aircraft manufactures and their customers both civil and military. This year alone Boeing announced that they had taken orders worth $98.4bn and Airbus announcing total orders for 754 aircraft.

On Display

As expected the large players in the market brought samples to woe buyers. This year’s emphasis was on the emerging markets in feeder liners both in Asia and Africa. The current inventories of both Airbus and Boeing showed a hole in the 85 to 120 seat markets and so to plug these holes both Boeing and Airbus have made alliances with smaller manufactures who specialise in the feeder market ie: Boeing working with Brazils Embraer and Airbus with Canadas Bombardier.

 

Boeing

  

Boeing 737 Max 7

  

         Boeing 747F                                                                                      Boeing 787 Dreamliner

  

Boeing CH47F Chinook                                                                                      Boeing B727          

 

Bombardier

Bombardier Global 6000

  

Bombardier CRJ900

  

Bombardier Dash8-Q400

 

Airbus

  

Airbus A220-300

  

Airbus A350-1000

  

Airbus A330-900neo

  

Airbus H125                                                                                           Airbus VSR700

   

Casa 259M

 

Embraer

  

Embraer E190-E2

  

Embraer KC390

 

Other manufactures were also well represented, including Leonardo, BAe Systems, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Gulfstream, Dassault, L3 Technologies to name but a few.

 

Leonardo

  

AW101 Merlin                                                                                             AW159 Wildcat

  

   Super Lynx 300                                                                                                 AW169       

  

AW189                                                                                                        ATR72MP

T100

 

BAe Systems

  

Tempest III                                                                                                   Tornado GR4

 

Lockheed Martin

 

C130J Hercules                                                                                           F16C Viper

 

L3 Technologies

AT-802L Longsword

 

Antonov

  

Antonov 178

 

Mitsubishi

  

Mitsubishi MRJ (Mitsubishi Regional Jet)

 

Dassault

  

    Falcon 8X                                                                                                  Falcon 900LX

 

Dornier

  

Dornier 328-110

Public days

Friday Saturday and Sunday have become public days with trade aircraft and exhibitors replaced by the more traditional airshow acts. This year the stars of the show were the Red Bull fleet (DC6 P38 B25 F8 and Alpha jet) AV8B Harrier II of the Spanish Navy and the Red Bull Racers.

     

 

Cliff Ibell Images would like to thank The FIA Media team and all the Exhibitors for the unpresidented access during FIA 18. A full set of photos from the week can be found here Farnborough Airshow 2018