Interview with Emeric d’Arcimoles, general commisionner of the Paris Air Show.
Q: How is the airshow going in term of exhibitors and visitor numbers?
A: Quite well: we said we expected more than 2,300 exhibitors, whose 50 percent are foreigners, and we met this goal. It’s a real acknowledgement of the international aerospace community for the Paris Air Show. In term of visitors, we expect a little bit more than in the 2015 edition, where we hosted 350,000 visitors, of which 150,000 were professionals. So this show will be a good edition. We want to make this air show an opportunity for small-to-medium sized companies to meet big OEMs from a lot of countries. We also want to showcase new digital technologies, with our Paris Air Lab, where around 100 start-ups are exhibiting.
Q: There’s a strong presence of US companies?
A: Yes, it’s a tradition. The U.S. are the first foreign country represented in the Paris Air Show, with a lot of new aircraft, like the F-35 of Lockheed Martin, the Boeing 787-10 and the 737 Max 9 and, of course, the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey. I think that one of the attractions for the U.S. exhibitors will be the presence of more than 380 delegations coming from a lot of foreign countries.
Q: How did you convince the American authorities to send the F-35 to Paris?
A: It’s true that the F-35 recently faced some administrative issues, but we fixed it very fast and easily with the Pentagon. We have a very good collaboration with them because Americans were keen to show their stealth fighter. Moreover, Lockheed Martin wanted to showcase its fighter to its European clients, and to other potential customers, and the Paris Air Show is the best place for that!
The Paris air show is organized by the Groupement des Industries Françaises Aéronautiques et Spatiales (Gifas). Gifas has recently named a new president–Eric Trappier, who is also president and CEO of Dassault Aviation. He replaced Marwan Lahoud, former international strategy chief of Airbus Group.