With just over 12 hours before the Farnborough air show kicks off in earnest - the Flightglobal team has already been working hard to produce tomorrow's show daily - I thought it would be good to outline the Asian presence at the show this year.
The most visible Asian presence is the Malaysia Airlines
A380, which dominates the static line. There is also a CRJ in China Express
Airlines livery, and an AW139 in the livery of Malaysia's Weststar, which will
use the type to ferry oil workers to and from offshore rigs.
Walked all over the place and could not find the Korea Aerospace Industries T-50, but KAI has asked me to meet them at it tomorrow at 4pm. Perhaps it just has not arrived yet. The biggest disappointment was the no-show of the JF-17 and CATIC - this after I wrote a big feature about China's fighter escort prospects.
COMAC, meanwhile, has a big stand. My colleague Mavis has written an excellent feature about China's commercial aerospace ambitions that is available in the FG Club - which is free to join. India's HAL has a huge chalet, but when I swung by earlier it was largely empty. Not sure what they are flogging here. With luck I'll be able to get a meeting with the company's new chairman. Several big Japanese companies are also present.
Look forward to seeing how much Asian carriers swell the
order books of the big airframers over the next few days.
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