A SHOW LIKE NO OTHER

The Paris Air Show 2023 will be long remembered as the India Air Show with record orders from Indian airlines. It was also the show when electric, hydrogen and eVTOLs took centre stage. A special report.

India dominated the Paris Air Show 2023—plain and simple. First, it was Indigo and then Air India. And that was a total of 970 narrow and widebody aircraft from the world's fastest growing aviation market. For a second day on Tuesday, as Air India finalised a huge order for 470 planes from Airbus and Boeing.

As with EBACE, the Le Bourget 2023 was also dominated by constant chatter about sustainability, cleaner transport and robotic weapons of the future even while CEOs were huffing and puffing at managing the supply chain woes. On the one hand, was the sunny spectacle of booming travel and record airline profits and orders and on the other the fear of a climate-induced sustainability transition and, of course, a war economy.

The world's largest aviation trade show, which alternates with Farnborough in the UK, returned to Le Bourget for the first time in four years after the pandemic forced the 2021 edition to be cancelled. The tentativeness of Farnborough 2022 was replaced with exuberance—travel has returned with a vengeance.

Extraordinarily, the show this time was a seller’s market considering the number of airlines queuing up to negotiate deals. And aircraft are no more discounted unless you have a mega order in mind. While all might not be announced straightaway, it is apparent that deals were being crafted all through the six days of the show. It is a reflection of the angst the airline CEOs Experience when they realise they have limited options with aircraft sold well into the early 2030s. As many of them said at the International Air Transport Association meeting in Istanbul they would be pretty keen on placing orders p to a decade ahead to avoid being left behind as traffic recovers from the pandemic.