Gas guzzling at the Paris air show

Jet fighters make a din, cost hundreds of millions, they pollute like crazy and they are made to kill people. But there are few things more heart-stopping than seeing one showing off low in the summer sky over Paris.

All right, you have to love aeroplanes. For those who do so and those who make their living from them (not necessarily the same thing), the Le Bourget air show is a feast. Even if you don't fancy seeing a 20-tonne Dassault Rafale fighter pulling turns with the agility of a dancer, Le Bourget's biennial Mecca of the aviation business is great spectacle. I have just dropped in there with my 16-year-old son, soaking up sights that ranged from glider aerobatics to  the new A380 Airbus performing steep turns over the field. The amazing thing is that the giant airliner, which can carry 850 people, makes little noise.

The same could not be said for the John Travolta's Boeing 707. The actor, who is Hollywood's biggest pilot, flew his old private airliner into le Bourget on Wednesday. He was full of praise for the Airbus and French aviation when he chatted with us reporters.

Travolta claims to be the only private pilot to have flown the new Airbus. Qantas, the Australian airline which he serves as a part-time captain, let him have a go last year, he said. "It's quite easy...You fly it with a little side-stick and if you make a mistake, the computer straightens it out," he said.

[photo: A380 lands at le Bourget. Long lens brings in the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre] 

Travolta's big old Boeing uses twice the fuel of the much bigger Airbus. It drinks thousands of dollars worth of kerosene per hour. Which brings us to the underlying moral of this year's air show, or at least the civil aviation side: a sense of guilt about the extravagance and environmental damage of flying. The world's plane-makers are on a roll with demand for airliners and business jets projected to rise for as far as anyone can see. Airbus has this week announced new orders for 425 new jets worth 61 billion dollars. But jet traffic is already blamed for wreaking havoc on the earth's atmosphere.

[Rafale at le Bourget]

The makers argue the vastly improved efficiency of modern engines compared with the dirty old jets of the 707 era. Green is the theme of the air show this year. Jet engines are even being displayed on indoor grass. EADS, the Airbus parent company, has dubbed its A380 "the gentle green giant" -- because it uses less fuel per passenger than a family car -- when its seats are full. CFM, a Franco-American firm, is even showing a big jet engine that runs on fuel made 30 percent from vegetables.

But even with the improvement of engine technology, it is hard to see how the world can reconcile the conflict between mass air travel and a cleaner sky. For me this heightens the sense of nostalgia at Le Bourget, the old Paris airport that is part of aviation history. It was 80 years ago last month, that Charles Lindbergh landed his single-engined plane at le Bourget after flying from New York in the first solo crossing of the Atlantic. From those pioneering days to quite recently, the future of flying seemed boundless. Now the limits are closing in. The next step will be doing away with the aviator. Pilotless airliners are coming before long.

Over 200,000 people are visiting le Bourget this weekend in search of the old magic. For me, it is symbolised by the Lockheed Super Constellation. This was the last great propellor airliner, the ultimate in elegance, that was built to the specifications of Howard Hughes and his TWA airline. It entered service after world war two but was quickly outdated by the first jets. One of only four still flying examples is rumbling into the sky every afternoon at le Bourget. You can see the 1953 airliner parked behind Travolta and here it is in flight.

 

   

Comments

[Ros]

What a boring article ! Nice pictures all the same!

[Steve NL]

Good to see you breaking free from the Emperor Sarko, Charles. Aviation is one thing that the Americans and French pioneered together. Le Bourget is about competition but it's also a celebration, as you note. Though I don't suppose everyone wants to get poetic about flying. We Dutch have almost stamped it out.

[Robert Marchenoir]

There are still Constellations flying?!? Amazing!

[Edward Johns]

Hi Steve NL,
have to agree with you on getting away from Sarko--and all of the political utterings from the last several blogs.
Have to take issue with your assertion that the French and the USA pioneered aviation. The below, (lifted from Wikipedia) suggests flights even before Da Vinci's ideas on it.

"In 559, the first documented attempt at human flight by means of kite according to the Comprehensive Mirror for the Aid of Government.[1]

During the 9th century, the Muslim Moor Armen Firman invented the first parachute, followed by Abbas Ibn Firnas who invented the first hang glider. They are both known to have made manned flights with their inventions. Abbas Ibn Firnas was able to glide for upto 10 minutes in the air before making an unsuccessful landing. Eilmer of Malmesbury did the same in circa 1010, flying over 200 metres, possibly inspired by their flights"

[alan morgan]

I did wonder when you would comment on the air show. A good piece of controlled reporting. You did not let your excitement show too much. I use to go to Biggin Hill and understand the sentiments you must have felt.

[terry]

Doing away with the pilot? I don't think so. When something malfunctions, who's going to land it? Subway trains still have drivers.

For those in the know, I don't believe in "magic".

[Thanks Terry. But there are many subway trains operating without drivers, including lines in the Metro in Paris, Toulouse and other French cities. For over a decade, the Orlyval train has been running from the number two Paris airport with no driver. CB]

[Ros]

Sorry, on re-reading it wasn't really boring - in fact, my ignorant self learnt quite a lot from it!

[Dominique]

I am sorry, but we all should stop for a minute! Jack Bauer is in Paris for a top secret mission and i believe we should all be aware of the dangers we'll need to face !!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2c39o_24-jack-bauer-in-paris-france

[azloon]

EDWARD JOHNS

i believe the events described above (hang glider, parachute) marked the zenith (flameout?) of the muslim aerospace initiative.

[Daniel Strohl]

Charles and Terry,

I happened to use the Toulouse subway train without driver already may be 10 years ago. The great advantage of this system is that there are no drivers being able to go on strike "à l'appel de la CGT". « La CGT » is our biggest union, whose evolution since 1936 is not very spectacular, to say the least

Their main « clients » are mostly civil servants and the like.

Charles,

Yesterday evening, in "C dans l'air", the former French astronaut Jean L. Chrétien explained that the engines of the shuttle are fueled with liquid oxygen and hydrogen - the result of the combustion is water (H2O). This is greener than green !

Note : we have got a nice "terrain d'aviation" here in Colmar. It would be ideal for a week-end flight. The runway is long enough even for your "Robin". Furthermore, there are no big navigation problems to find it and to discriminate it from the close-by Colmar-Meyenheim military air field, since a conspicuous but of course smaller replica of the « Statue of Liberty » stands at short distance from the control tower. The sculptor Bartholdi (1834-1904) who has made the statue in New-York is born in Colmar.

For persons not familiar with French geography : Colmar is located about 40 miles south of Strasbourg, 10 mi west of the Rhine River, bordering the German frontier and a few miles east of the foothills of the Vosges Mountains.

[The 3rd column]

Charles,

Had I known you were at the Bourget with your son, I could've invited you to our stand to view battle lab, a test lab of sorts - mix and match of real and synthetic, test tactics, equipment, pricing, etc., do naval, aerial, missile battle, etc. pretty clever system for military applications at the moment but which will be developped eventually with civilian applications.

For Terry's information, Global Hawk is a long range, high altitude unmanned aircraft (UAV)that takes off from a military base in Kansas flying direct to Afhganistan and has been in use for last 7 years by US military.

[The 3rd column]

Incidentally, Pres Sarkozy came for a tour of our stand today at 15h00.

[terry]

CB & 3rd

Serves me right. Well, it's my analogy so I guess I have to live with it. But the difference between subway trains is that you can fetch the people from the tunnel when the train breaks down. When the plane breaks down, what then? 400 parachutes? Are we gonna beam the passengers down?

Like CB, I am a also private pilot. Only VFR though. When I was learning to fly, my instructor would always give me some sort of malfunction every time I went up to train me to glide and find a suitable landing spot. I like the idea of someone with an a-type personality sitting in the cockpit in case something goes wrong. Yes, I know there are remote drones and that the tech exists. The people may tolerate driverless trains, but planes... I dunno.

[michael robertson]

Your coment about the A380 being so quiet highlights a design feature that was designed in from the start, in that the flaps, landing gear and leading edge devices have all been designed to create less noise whilst the plane is flying low and slow, combined with the very large diameter high bypass ratio engines, all of which make the plane very quiet. This was in order to allow arrivals at early mornings at places such as Heathrow, without disturbing those living below the approach path.
It is a shame that the external appearance of modern jets gives little clue to the enormous advances in aerodynamic and engine efficiency that has taken place over the last 30 years. A visitor from the early 1970s would be shocked at how similar planes look now as compared to then, and might wonder what has been going on since, especially with the complete lack of any supersonic airliners, which at the time were supposedly set to replace subsonic jets!

With regard to pilotless airliners, this is not as far fetched as it may seem as the modern fly by wire control systems could easily linked to ground based operators and traffic controllers to alter speed height and direction continuously to maintain separation from other aircrft as required. Pilots can, and have been incapacitiated mid-flight in the past, consider the Helios airways crash in Greece, caused by lack of oxygen in the cabin. A slant on this idea is a suggestion of a single pilot in the left hand seat, and a dog in the right hand seat. What is the dog there for you might ask, well it is there in order to bite the hand of the pilot should he attempt to touch the controls. Now I'm sure that this is not why you take your own dog flying, as described in a recent post "La France tranquille", but who knows, a time may come when private aircraft are remote controlled, and the owner simply selects his destination from a list of destinations/favourites, and hits a start button, to begin the GPS-controlled flight! A lot less fun you can be sure, but perhaps a lot safer!

As ever, the news-channels over here have given the Paris Airshow minimal coverage on the UK TV. Most brits are probably unaware that the event has even taken place!

[Monika]

I almost would have got there this weekend but I decided not this year despite the invitation.

Reading your report I almost regret it.

But helas, there'll be more Salons and there's another big air fair in Berlin next year.

I am not a pilot myself but passionate about planes, too. Particularly historic planes. This constelation simply has beautiful lines though I am able to appreciate the beauty of the A380, too.

But one thing I want to precise: fuel made from vegetables have the advantage of growing - unlike classic oil. On the other hand it is not necessarily greener since its use is still based on carbon oxidisation thus producing carbon oxydes as oil does. On the other hand people argue only that amount of carbon oxyde is set free by combustion that has been previously consumed by the plant. I don't yet have an idea clear about this issue.

At the same time O2 + H2 combustion is not as innocent when occuring in altitudes at which airliners operate. This condensed water may form clouds that will stay for a long time without raining down and contribute to Earth heating trapping the heat on Earth. Actually even today the trails of condensed water (the white stripes you see occasionally from airplanes) already do cause some concern.

[Guilherme]

Dear Ros,

I would say Americans and Brazilians, with the amazing French people being the witnesses!

Never forget Santos Dumont!

[Adrian]

Hi,

Does John Travolta really act as a part-time captain for Qantas? If you look up his license details on the FAA website (https://amsrvs.registry.faa.gov/airmeninquiry/) he "only" has a PPL with type an instrument rating and type ratings for the different jets he flies. He is specifically restricted to flying as P2 on the 707. Not trying to knock him - I can't do what he does - but unless he also holds an Australian ATPL he isn't able to fly commercially.

[Monika]

Not to forget:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cayley

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal

[Monika]

Forgot to add:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead

and for our French friends:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clément_Ader

[Thierry]

Poor Rafale jet fighter. Nobody except the French wants to buy it...
By the way,did anybody meet his Royal Highness Prince Bandar during this show?!

[jay]

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