S'pore air show to witness hard sell by aviation firms
S'pore air show to witness hard sell by aviation firms
SINGAPORE (Reuter): Asia's biggest air show opens in Singapore
next week with top aerospace and defense firms gunning for a
slice of one of the world's fastest-growing aviation and defense
markets.
The Asian Aerospace show, from February 6 to 11, will witness
hard-sell tactics by companies offering everything from the
latest in the Boeing family to the famous American B2- "Stealth"
bomber and Belgian night and thermal vision goggles for fighter
pilots.
Some 929 firms from 36 countries, down slightly from the last
show in 1994, aim to make their presence felt at the show.
Civilian plane-makers like Boeing and its archrival Airbus
Industrie ARBU.N and military aircraft manufacturers from the
U.S., Britain, France and Russia will be at the air show's Changi
site to hawk their hardware.
Asian nations, helped by their booming economies, offer
tremendous opportunities for both military and civilian sectors,
industry analysts said.
They said Asian states are either beefing up or re-equipping
their armed forces to help protect the resources fueling their
prosperity.
"The region of Southeast Asia is one of the last in the world
where defense budgets continue to expand in the post Cold War
era," Derek da Cunha, of Singapore's Institute of South East
Asian Studies, told a recent Bangkok defense conference.
"Between the years 2005 and 2010, the ASEAN armed forces will
deploy a formidable array of hardware, the most notable aspects
of which being submarines and fixed-wing aircraft," he said.
Da Cunha said by then the combined strength of the current
seven-member ASEAN air forces could well be close to 1,000
planes, up by 20 percent in size from today's total of around
800.
Strike and interceptor aircraft may include upgraded versions
of the Lockeed Martin Corp F-16C/D, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18,
Russian MIG-29 and Sukhoi models and British Aerospace Hawk
aircraft.
The seven-member ASEAN groups the countries of Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam.
French Dassault Aviation's Rafale fighter will be in Singapore
for its first appearance in Asia.
Britain's crack Red Arrows aerobatics team, flying the Hawk
jet trainer, will make their debut in Singapore following their
visit to Brunei, the tiny, oil-rich sultanate on Borneo, to try
to boost U.K. plane sales.
In the civilian sector, the Singapore show precedes major
orders by top Asian airlines, led by Singapore Airlines Ltd and
Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS), in the past weeks.
SIA ordered 77 state-of-the-art Boeing 777 aircraft worth
US$12.7 billion while MAS took 15 Boeing 777s and 10 Boeing 747-
400s valued at $4.0 billion as part of their fleet expansion
programs.
The Singapore air show is generally regarded as the world's
third most important after Paris and Britain's Farnborough air
shows.
"We are very targeted," Jimmy Lau, managing director of Asian
Aerospace Pte Ltd, the show organizers. "Five or six of the
world's most profitable airlines are in the Asia-Pacific region.