Page 31 - AA 2018_09

FACE Tyears, are often strange beasts

he biennial Farnborough
Airshow, and its Paris
counterpart in odd-numbered
to cover from the perspective of
passengers and the aviation industry
half a world away in Australia, New
Zealand and Asia Pacific.

changing the way Farnborough works
At shows like this, most headlines
The Farnborough The geopolitical context has been
revolve around whether Boeing
Airshow points to the OFF outsold Airbus or vice versa. This
competition drives some not entirely
future of aviation rational behaviour between the
two large airframers, and between

WRITER: JOHN WALTON the smaller ones too. This includes
announcing, in decreasing levels
of commitment and likelihood to
happen, firm orders, memoranda of
understanding, and letters of intent.
The joke is, of course, that most
anyone can sign a letter of intent,
but both airframers take the race
seriously.
The behaviour also drives various
ceremonies of formalisation, often
including assorted dignitaries,
attended by bevies of uniformed flight
attendants being used as props in a
manner that seems more and more
anachronistic, in numbers inverse
to the contextual scale of the order,
the independence from government
interference of airline operations, and
the overall health of the carrier.
Orders are therefore sometimes
announced, re-confirmed, and
finalised at three successive airshows.
It’s usually more than a little bit
self-congratulatory towards the
more nebulous end, as airlines enjoy
parading their plans in front of the
world’s assembled aviation media, but
this year the wider geopolitical context
threw a spanner in the works.
Large capital investment-
heavy industries like commercial
aviation require a certain amount
of predictability and certainty
to make new investments make
financial sense. With the behaviour
of the US White House becoming
increasingly capricious, irrational and
erratic, the backdrop for investment
announcements is not one of either
predictability or certainty.
Indeed, while Boeing is to an
extent reaping some rewards from
its chief executive befriending the
administration, the prospect of trade
wars is looming large. In essence, said
Airbus’s chief commercial officer Eric
Schulz, nobody knows what bizarre
all-caps Twitter screed the world will
wake up to, and that’s not an ideal
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