It’s been a busy few weeks in aerospace. The Paris Air Show saw major announcements including the launch of the Boeing 787-10 as well as the usual orders flurry. In the UK Heathrow Airport became a primetime TV star in the BBC Two strand Airport Live – with respectable ratings suggesting that the viewing audience liked it. Even if, perhaps to the chagrin of sniffy TV critics, there was little drama in a programme that was about informing rather than providing the car-crash viewing of slanging matches between hot-headed passengers and airline staff that was the bread-and-butter of the BBC’s Airport and ITV’s Airline ‘fly-on-the-wall’ programmes.
Then the airshow season has got going. The settled weather since May has meant that events large and small have been packed out – 30,000 turned out to the Armed Forces Day at Scarborough (which I took in as part of a weekend break in Yorkshire) where the flying display was just the Red Arrows, a Typhoon, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, a Sea King and a parachute team. The current hot spell which started in the UK at the start of July is likely to lead to more sun-kissed events reporting good crowd figures. Swansea City Council are reporting 180,000 packed into Swansea to watch the Wales National Airshow over the weekend of 14th/15th June.
I’ve been really busy writing and editing for AIR International as well as fitting in some PR work for an agency. I’ve got features on the Boeing 787-10, regional airlines and British Airways receiving its first A380 and 787s in the next issue of AIR International. It’s out next week in the shops and online.
Mark Broadbent 