The Farnborough International Airshow in the UK is one of the world’s premier aerospace events, where major industry announcements and billion-dollar deals are as common as muffins. New Atlas is on the ground at this year’s record-breaking event.
Every other year, the sleepy Hampshire town of Farnborough explodes in cosmopolitan confusion as exhibitors, delegates, industrial giants, politicians, media, and visitors estimated at 120,000 descend over a five-day period. While the bleeding-edge technology and contract signing worth the GDP of a small nation are the headlines, the Farnborough International Airshow is a story in and of itself.
My first impression of the scale of Farnborough came, oddly enough, at London’s Waterloo station, where I boarded the express train to Farnborough. Finding a seat was a trek because all the coaches were packed and I had to walk to the front of the train to get in.
Packed trains aren’t unusual in London, but an early-morning express to a small town going out of the capital rather than in rather goes against the trend. It’s also a bit odd to see so many people in the car dressed as if for a business meeting.
But the real revelation came when we reached Farnborough. As I alighted, literally the entire train emptied and almost a thousand people swarmed through the tiny station while a squad of officials wielded ticket scanners and shouted instructions.
That was only the start. At the bus stop, there was a queue of chartered double-decker buses and a vast crowd, mostly men in blue business suits, snaked four times around the car park, waiting to board the vehicles. Looking down at my khaki field jacket, cargo pants, fisherman’s shirt, and walking boots, I suspected that I would blend in like a hedgehog at a hamster convention.
David Szondy/New Atlas
The ride to the airshow only confirmed how disruptive the event was. The narrow roads were clogged with traffic, with temporary barriers and strategically placed traffic cops fighting to maintain some over-optimistic sense of order.
I couldn’t help noticing that the blue suits and smart dresses were everywhere I looked, walking along the pavement, getting in or out of large black limousines at various stops. I’m not even counting the private helicopters buzzing by. This was because every bit of accommodation within a wide radius had been snapped up for the show, which is why I was traveling down from London along with who knows how many more. I later learned that some places had been booked over a year in advance by companies to make sure their people had a place to stay.
When we reached Farnborough Airport, which is the home of the airshow, we were expertly herded through security checks, separating the visitors from exhibitors and media, examining bags, and bleeping our passes. From the speed at which things moved, it was obvious why they had us preprint our passes and then handed us lanyards to stick them in.
David Szondy/New Atlas
Mind you, the speed, and the steps, were not welcome to someone my age for whom rushing causes the feet to complain incessantly,
Stepping through the main entrance, I saw that the organizers made sure to sock in attendees smack in the eye. We walked through a darkened hall with a deep, low, machine-like whine rising and falling in our ears. On the back wall was a huge LED screen that covered the entire surface, and on the floor was similarly equipped free-standing pylons. All of these projected a synchronized animated display that wouldn’t be out of place in a science fiction film revolving around the theme of the show, “The Apex of Aviation.”
That’s not all that hyperbolic. Farnborough was where the first powered flight in Britain took off in 1908, and was home of the legendary Royal Aircraft Establishment, which saw the birth of Frank Whittle’s jet aircraft in 1941, the building of the Concorde in the 1960s, the testing of high-altitude “spacesuits” and many other major research and development projects.
Running this year between July 20 and July 24, the Farnborough Airshow itself dates back to 1948 when it was established to showcase British aviation, which, at that time, was arguably the most advanced to the world from an engineering point of view. Small wonder the Comet, the world’s first jet airliner, made its debut there, as did the Concorde in 1970. In 1966, the rules were relaxed to allow in foreign aircraft using British components, and in 1976 the show went fully international.
David Szondy/New Atlas
Today, the organizers claim that the show is bigger than ever, with a 20% jump in attendance matched by a 15% increase in exhibitors, with 63% international, to 1,636 over the last show in 2024.
None of that was obvious to me, even after looking at a free map I collected. I decided to make a thorough tour of the first of five exhibit halls to get my bearings. That took me the entire morning, and my feet were killing me as I stepped outside for the first time and got some idea of the scale.
The Farnborough Airshow is gigantic, covering the equivalent of 78 football pitches, and those five exhibit halls were just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Along with the halls, there were a number of smaller exhibits spaces and 28 international pavilions. Along with this were the static aircraft exhibits strewn about the site and the famous “chalets,” which are the invitation-only reserve of companies who are more interested in signing contracts with high rollers rather than wooing the general public.
By good fortune, I later managed to gain entry to one of these chalets to cover a story, and I found that I could very easily get used to the VIP treatment.
I spoke with one of the contractors who helped set up the show and he told me that almost all the buildings, though they looked remarkably substantial, were temporary. In fact, it is the world’s largest temporary outdoor exhibit. It took 4,000 contractors over 65,000 man-days across three months to erect it all and install the infrastructure for lighting and ventilation. When the show is over, it all gets pulled down and in two years a whole new lot gets put up.
That’s as may be. What I do know is that even though I have walked up to seven miles each day, I still haven’t seen everything after four days with one to go.
But what I have learned about is the vocabulary of blue suits after brushing by thousands of them per hour. I can tell the ones worn as work clothes by those who barely tolerate them, and feel no guilt about brown shoes or sneakers. I also know about the carefully tailored ones with a carefully selected watch as a crafted symbol of superior status. And I’ve even seen the Olympian ones for whom it seems to come with their DNA, and if they’re walking toward you, they expect you to step aside.
David Szondy/New Atlas
But Farnborough is about aircraft, military and civilian, as marketable commodities. All the big hitters are here. Boeing, Airbus, Anduril, Rolls Royce, and many others have been revealing new products or announcing major sales or partnerships.
Far outnumbering them are the smaller companies trying to expand or just make a name for themselves along with hordes of vendors of components and services like precision gears, alloys, coatings, electrical harnesses, fasteners, cockpit displays, financing, and many more. There’s even a dedicated space area emphasizing that aerospace means space as well as air.
You can get a remarkable education as you browse the exhibitor stands with a bit of patience. On the other hand, simply walking through the halls is like being stuck inside a very noisy kaleidoscope, with every stand fighting to stand out from its neighbors, only to have all the displays combined with the churning crowds turning into a single, homogenous riot of chaos.
David Szondy/New Atlas
However, a notable difference from previous shows is that China makes a smaller appearance than I’d expected and Russia is banned – something that has not happened formally since Farnborough went international.
For those like me, whose gray hairs belie the fact that I’ve never really matured beyond 10 years old, the static displays are the real magnet. There is nothing I find that lifts the heart like an RAF Hercules cargo plane or a mockup of a Ghost Bat autonomous fighter.
If you have enough shoe leather, you can see a Joby Aviation eVTOL, Dassault Falcon 6X , Eurofighter F-2000A Typhoon, Aero Vodochody L-159, Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II, Saab JAS-39C Gripen, De Havilland Canada C-23B Sherpa, Westland Sea King, Boeing 747-400 Engine Flying Testbed, Douglas C-47 Dakota III … Well, you get the idea.
David Szondy/New Atlas
Along with these, Farnborough is famous for its flying displays. These include US Air Force Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning IIs, Italian Air Force Eurofighter F-2000A Typhoons, the Saab 340B Hybrid-Electric Testbed, a British Boeing CH-47F Chinook, the Red Devils parachute team, a Battle of Britain Spitfire, and many more.
The one thing they have in common is that when they appear in the skies overhead, I’m always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
As I write this, the initial craziness of the show has swept past. The big deals have been made, the big shots have come and gone. No major events are in the offing, and though the crowds are still here, they’ve tapered off to the point where I had a train car pretty much to myself coming in. Farnborough can soon relax and take a deep breath.
That is, until 2028. But that’s another story.
In the meantime, be sure to check out the photo gallery for the highlights from this year’s show.
