New Delhi. It’s time again for that big festival of those beautiful flying machines in Paris where the first air show was held in 1909 with fragile wooden aircraft and bravest of men and women wanting to fly higher and higher.
It was a festival then, it’s a festival now, of men and women in fine attire, rushing into business meetings or past one another. Their dreams perhaps are still the same except that while in the earlier era of flying, it would have been more of a passion, today there is a third, dominating element, that of technology. Indeed, the accelerating pace of new technologies has opened new frontiers, from flying with single, piston engine aircraft to powerful jets and, soon in the coming years, to ramjets and hypersonics.
The Paris Air Show is the largest in the world, and the world’s biggest plane makers from Airbus to Boeing, Dassault, Embraer, Gulfstream, Lockheed Martin, Leonardo, Mitsubishi, Sukhoi and some others will be there. They are expected to show new innovations in flying technologies and passenger comfort.
Dassault, which is set to deliver the first lot of 36 Rafale fighter jets to the Indian Air Force (IAF) in September, just three months away, is likely to impress upon the Indian officials visiting there the advantage of a larger order. IAF in any case has asked the Government for more of the Rafales as they are to be stationed both in India’s Western and Eastern sectors, at Ambala and Hashimara, respectively, where the necessary infrastructure for basing them is now in place.
Of course, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Eurofighter and MiG executives would be there to showcase their aircraft and advantages to buyers not only from India but also from the Middle East.
The Indian Ministry of Defence is already working on a declared competition for 110 combat jets for IAF.
The Middle East market, dominated by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, continues to be hungry due to the occasional triggers of tension in the region, the latest being the attacks on oil tankers allegedly by Iran, but denied by it.
The most interesting piece of news from the event however is likely to come from Boeing. The world’s largest, and a highly reliable, plane maker, has been bruised by two crashes of its new 737 Max aircraft. The world needs a reassurance, and surely, Boeing would come up with an announcement of remedial measures, and possibly also of some new orders that would help repose the faith of passengers.
