Competition in the Air

The hottest show in Paris last week played at neither Le Sexy nor at the uproarious Crazy Horse Saloon, but out at vintage Le Bourget Airport, where Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. It was the 26th biennial Paris Air Show, the world's biggest, and the heat was caused by the jockeying to win competitive honors. Nearly everyone who counts in world aviation was there, partly to impress potential customers and partly to size up rivals and their hardware. Serious buyers from more than 100 nations and squadrons of national officials, including 58 junketing U.S. Senators and Congressmen, came to look over the 250 types of planes and other aerospace products displayed by a record 448 exhibitors from 16 countries.

Officials of the sponsoring Union of Aeronautical and Space Industries put up 107 blue-and-white chalets in which companies entertained and made their sales pitches. In a move to cultivate potential customers, the French Government paid the traveling expenses of 80 foreign delegations. The U.S. Government not only appropriated $100,000 for the show, but also deployed 400 military men and 200 civilians to help staff its facilities, even had a fleet of ten helicopters shuttling between the field and the U.S. embassy.

Tipped Showcase. The largest array of exhibits this year--62 planes and scores of components--was displayed by 41 U.S. firms, all of which are fighting to keep their lucrative 70% share of the free world's $2 billion-a-year market in aerospace exports. General Electric unveiled a full-size mock-up of the engine with which it proposes to power an American supersonic transport, even though the U.S. has not formally decided to develop one. Lockheed showed its experimental XH-51 helicopter, the fastest (270 m.p.h.) in the free world, and a Lockheed C-141 StarLifter, the largest craft at the show, flew across the Atlantic with an inflatable Army field hospital. The Defense Department showed off combat aircraft that ranged from McDonnell's supersonic Phantom F-4Bs to a 20-year-old F-51 Mustang fighter, and a 96-ft. Atlas missile towered over the sprawling 85-acre exhibition.

European manufacturers stressed their growing teamwork in producing sophisticated equipment too costly for one country to devise alone. Britain and France shared an exhibit of their supersonic Concorde, taking advantage of the lone air-transport realm in which the U.S. lags, pointed proudly to 47 orders already on the books for the still unbuilt plane. The French government seized the occasion to order Sud-Aviation to build 13 more of its twin-jet Caravelles, and France's Nord-Aviation showed off the twin-engined Transall cargo plane that it has developed with five German firms.

Rival Images. Britain pushed for more orders for its short-haul BAC One-Eleven jet, which faces stiff competition from Boeing's new 737 and Douglas' DC-9, and its BAC Super VC 10, which seeks to crack the domination of Boeing's 707 and Douglas' DC-8 in the European long-haul market. Italy's Fiat and two German firms displayed plans for a new vertical takeoff reconnaissance craft, the VAK 191. Even the small European countries offered advanced products, such as the Swedish supersonic Saab-35 Draken interceptor and the Dutch Fokker F.28 twio-jet airliner built with German, English and North Irish collaboration.

The Russians tried to project a peaceful image by showing off only civil craft, including their 186-passenger, four-jet Ilyushin II-62, and a MIL Mi-10 helicopter, bigger than anything in the West. While the other nations shared six exhibition halls, the Soviets wangled an unprecedented pavilion of their own for Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the charred Vostok I capsule in which he rode through space four years ago. Despite their glossy look, the Soviet planes attracted no buyer interest: there are no service facilities outside the Communist bloc, and the Russians continue to keep secret all precise data on their economic performance. Western airmen were impressed by the apparent versatility of some Soviet planes. For instance, the Tu-134, a medium-range jet transport shown for the first time outside the U.S.S.R., folds its landing gear into its wings. That leaves the fuselage clear for conversion into--oops!--a bomb bay.

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