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Mood Somber at Paris' Venerable Air Show
Workers polish a U.S.-made RQ-4A Global Hawk, a high-altitude unmanned reconnaissance plane, during installation for the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport, Friday, June 13, 2003. Tough times in the aviation business and a raft of no-shows is hurting the party mood at the Paris Air Show, the industry's main trade event. The show will be inaugurated by French President Jacques Chirac Saturday, before opening to the public on Sunday. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

06:06 AM EST June 14, 2003
The Associated Press


LE BOURGET, France

Tough times in the aviation business mean a festive mood will be among the many no-shows at Saturday's opening of the 45th Paris Air Show - the industry's largest trade conference.

The downward spiral in the airline business - because of the SARS illness, the war in Iraq, and slumping demand for business and vacation travel - has snuffed out hopes for the big plane orders customarily announced at the show, which runs through June 22.

Not only that, but the U.S. Defense Department barred top-ranking officials from coming - a move widely interpreted as punishment for France's refusal to support the war against Iraq.

All those developments have magnified a trend among big aerospace companies of depending less and less on the two main shows - Paris alternates with one at Farnborough, England - to show off their wares and close deals.

The Paris show, first held in 1909, just six years after the Wright brothers' historic flight on Dec. 17, 1903, remains spectacular - as shown by the roaring fighter jets making the loop Friday a few hundred feet over Le Bourget airport outside Paris. It's still the place to see the latest planes and technology.

There's intense interest focused this year on pilotless planes such as Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk and General Atomics' Predator, which helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. The planes are the subject of a new four-day forum.

And despite the Defense Department no-shows, officials from the U.S. Commerce and State departments are expected to show up and support the industry in its sales efforts.

"It's our position as an industry that the U.S. government supports our presence," said John Douglass, head of the Aerospace Industries Association of America Inc.

But some companies have begun to question the return on the costs of travel and setting up elaborate "chalets" - purpose-built boxes for meetings, displays and press events.

Overall exhibit space is down 5 percent from 2001, the number of exhibitors fell to 1,700 from 1,856, and planes are down to 206 from 226, the organizers say. The U.S. presence has fallen by 20 percent.

Chicago-headquartered Boeing, for instance, isn't sending chief executive officer Phil Condit this year and has trimmed its spending on its presence by 35 to 40 percent. Northrop Grumman, maker of the Global Hawk and the B-2 bomber, has cut the number of people attending from 450 in 1997 to around 125.

Boeing spokesman Jim Schleuter said the company had been "taking a good, prudent look at our investment in air shows."

"They're still important to us," he said. "But we don't have to have as large a presence as before."

Both Boeing and its chief competitor, Europe's Airbus, are showing off only updated versions of older jetliners while trying to create more buzz about planes that haven't yet flown: Boeing's fuel-efficient 7E7 and Airbus' A380 superjumbo that will carry 550 people.

Northrop Grumman says its Global Hawk reconnaissance drone will be tested by the German armed forces later this year as officials decide whether to adopt the Euro Hawk version with sensors made by the EADS group, which includes Airbus.

 
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