From Paris, with love: Who's the toast of the airport show?

From Paris, with love: Who’s the toast of the airport show?

Come fly with Kipp, come fly away, as the song goes…One Aviation roundup from the Airport show ready for takeoff…

June 22, 2011 1:48 by Eva Fernandes

You didn’t think we’d honestly let the Paris air show pass us by without mentioning it even once, now did you?

OK. Here is a quick, and we hope painless, guide to everything significant that has happened at the show plus titbits along the way.

Let’s start with good ‘ol Emirates, which announced plans to create more than 500 jobs when it establishes a multimillion-dollar engine repair facility in Dubai. The Dh440.7million engine repair facility will be constructed on a 90,000 square metre plot.

Speaking of engines, at the very same gig, Etihad Airways signed a $360m deal with Rolls-Royce for long-term service contracts for the Trent engines on its fleet of Airbus A330 wide-bodied jets.

In another news, in true flashy Qatari style (yes, we jealous much) Qatar Airways opened the Paris Air Show with an impressive $1.7 billion order for more long-range 777 jets from Boeing. “We are expanding our international network rapidly and adding new routes and destinations that will extend Qatar Airways’ reach across the globe, especially as we aim to open up more non-stop routes to popular and under-served cities around the world” commented Akbar Al Baker, the chief executive of Qatar Airways.

In addition, US defence firm Raytheon announced the formation of a subsidiary company, Izdehar, which will assist its “joint ventures in the UAE spanning satellite imaging, encrypted data management and missile maintenance.” Raytheon’s vice president Kevin Massengill told reporters: “Izdehar is designed for us to hold the 49 per cent joint venture stakes in those companies we form in the UAE by way of offsets obligations.”

And before you go, here is one last titbit from the Paris Air show round-up: Airbus apparently raked in $14.4 billion of orders on the first day, racing far ahead than Boeing’s $9.3 billion. And if that wasn’t good enough, Airbus’ sales chief said it had 544 commitments for its new A320 aircraft. What is more, Airbus said it had also won almost “100 orders and commitments for its A320neo family of planes worth about $8.3 billion.”

In other aviation news, the UAE signed an “open” air services agreement with Romania which will allow scheduled planes from either side to ‘perform scheduled air services’ without a care in the world. Yay for open air services agreement!

And finally, FlyDubai has added its sixth destination in Saudi Arabia with its new flight route which goes Dammam. So not only will FlyDubai enthusiasts be able to fly to Riyadh, Jeddah, Gassim, Yanbu and Abha in Saudi, it will also be able to touch down in Dammam. Is it wrong that we had to fight ourselves from making some kind of “daymn” pun?