Location: Le Bourget exhibition, near Paris, France

Admission: One-day tickets only, adult: €13 including taxes free for childre under 7. Viewing stand place (numbered): €10 including taxes + daily admission.

Parking: 12€ incl. VAT

The Paris Air Show has been the world's leading aviation and space event for over 100 years. The Paris Airshow is a trade show that is held every 2 years in Le Bourget, France. It alternates with the equally important and prestigious biannual Farnborough air show held in England. Being a trade show, it is heavily business oriented, where new equipment is displayed and many multi-million dollar deals are closed. The first 4 days are exclusively for people in the aerospace business, leaving Friday, Saturday and Sunday for enthusiasts.

The glory days of Le Bourget are in the past! These days not much thought is given to those who go to the show not for the business end but for their love of aviation.

They do offer grandstand seating at extra cost, but it is located about 2 kilometers from the entrance of the airshow and it has a 2 meter fence in front of it. Between the fence and the grandstand there is a public area of about 100 meters that makes photographing aircraft taxing by, taking off and landing from the grand stand very difficult.

Because of the extreme hot temperatures during some of the airshow days, the organizers decided to use water hoses from fire trucks to cool down spectators. Perhaps that was a nice gesture, but it was not announced in advance, showing total disregard to the people and their equipment, which can be serious damaged by small amounts of water.

This year there were a few Paris air show debuts that flew only in the trade days. They include the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental and 747-8 Freighter, along with the 787. On the public days one of the stars was the Beriev BE200 Water bomber and Europcopter X-3 a demonstrator with wingtip-mounted props.