Day 5 – Friday 6th September

Possibly the best day of the show so far as regards weather: the flying display suffered only from the lack of the Sukhoi Su-30 and -37, apparently, according to rumour, because the crews had decided to go for a day’s shopping, the only chance they would get before returning home! The unusually good weather had one immediate effect – the price of the Farnborough umbrellas had fallen from £25 to £16 in order to clear the stock, according to an announcement on the Press Centre notice board!

Speaking of Sukhoi, one of the more dramatic announcements was that the Sukhoi Su-37 had challenged any US fighter aircraft at Farnborough to a dogfight to settle the argument regarding the relevance of the extraordinary manoeuvres the aircraft had been demonstrating in a combat environment. Claims had been made by a number of organisations and individuals that the Kulbit, Hook and Cobra manoeuvres were unusable in a combat situation because they caused the aircraft to lose too much energy and virtually come to a standstill. In a high threat environment, every heat seeking missile in the area would lock up on an afterburning, slow moving target, with the inevitable results. In order to defend their standpoint that the new manoeuvres would be lifesavers over the modern battlefield, Sukhoi requested that any fighter pilots who thought otherwise were welcome to try their luck against the Su-37 in the Farnborough skies. The dogfight would be monitored on telemetry systems, and the first aircraft to acquire a photograph of a definite kill would be declared the winner. If the safety limitations at Farnborough precluded the dogfight taking place there, then the Russians would be happy to accept a location over the Atlantic, although they admitted the crowds would not get such an exciting view. Just how serious things would have got cannot be judged, as there were no takers to pick up the gauntlet.

Business news of a more serious nature from the trade show was led by two announcements, the first from Saab, who expressed their interest in joining Airbus Industrie as a partner in developing the A3XX super-jumbo. The second news was from McDonnell Douglas, who revealed details of an order worth $1.3 billion from German airline Lufthansa. The order is for five MD-11F freighters, worth a total of $550,000,000, with options for a further seven aircraft. The delivery of the first aircraft will take place in June 1998.

The weekend is looming large, the two public days being the Saturday and Sunday at Farnborough 1996, and with them comes a much longer flying display including a wide variety of historic aircraft. A full report on the public show will appear tomorrow.