The Paris Air Show

On my last free day in Paris I went to the 51st Paris air show.  This considers itself to be the most important air show in the world, and last time (in 2013) was attended by 300,000 visitors!  It is firstly a trade show, where about 2,000 companies exhibit their products and services and for customers from the aviation industry to buy, and secondly a show where people (ok, men) can come and get a close look at all sorts of amazing aircraft and related technology.

The show is held at Le Bourget airport, which is one of several smaller Paris airports, where there are several large permanent exhibition halls in which the trade exhibitors set up their stands.  After three trade-only days the show opens to the public for three days, and the crowds pour in.  The main attractions are the dozens of aircraft of all shapes and sizes on display, and the flying displays overhead, which started about lunchtime and continued throughout the afternoon.

I took a train ride of about 45 minutes out to Le Bourget station where there were free shuttle buses to take everyone to the airport.  When I got out of the train I found myself in a crowd of about 2,000 people and growing fast, of people queuing for the shuttle buses!  It took me another hour or so to get on a bus, ride to the airport, go through security checks and then through the ticket office before I was actually there.

Colourful helicopter pilot's helmet.

The "Archangel" border security plane.

Airbus M400 military transport.

A turkish helicopter!  Note the red crescent engine cover.

A tiny gyrocopter.

Airbus demonstrated their new all-electric plane, which took off and flew about for a while to show that it really worked.  It's just a small plane (below) but represents an interesting development.  No doubt batteries will continue to get smaller and lighter.

The Airbus experimental electric plane.

It had not occurred to me that there would be drones at the show, but they were there in all shapes and sizes, quite a number of them.  The smallest are just one metre or so long, with little petrol engines and wooden-bladed propellers at the back, while the largest are the size of a light plane.

The "Long Range Lethal Loitering System" drone.

Large (behind) and small (foreground) drones.

Probably the biggest drone I noticed.

There were dozens of aircraft of all sizes, right up to a Boeing 747, and a European Ariadne space launch vehicle.

Ariadne space rocket.

I found a place on the ground to sit, along with thousands of others, and settled down to watch the flying displays.  They started with a world champion acrobatics pilot flying a plane he had built himself, and progressed to larger aircraft, right up to the huge Airbus A380 double-decker airliner.  It was amazing watching the large aircraft overhead doing things which would surely have had all the passengers screaming if any had been on board.

Airbus A350 giving a display.

Airbus A380 cavorting overhead (bigger than a Jumbo jet).

The final display I watched was the European fighter jet.  I don't have a long telephoto lens, so here is a distant picture of that jet, which whistled about at incredible speed doing all sorts of things that would make most of us black out, and all the time making a sound like a loud thunderstorm directly overhead.  I suspect the noise must be part of the design, because it is so loud you cannot hear yourself think.  After that I decided I had probably been sitting out in the hot sun long enough and had better start on the long trip home.  A memorable way to end this visit to Paris.