1988 Farnborough Air Show Report

Year of the Mig

Farnborough 1988, the 40th anniversary of one of the world s greatest air shows, will be long remembered as the occasion at which the Soviet Union lifted the veil of decades of secrecy on its front line military aircraft.

If somebody had told you, even six months earlier, that two MiG-29 Fulcrums would be displayed to their entirety then you would have been forgiven for taking them in jest. Time flies though and apparently so too does the mood of glasnost, with the latest MiGs visiting Farnborough 88 there is now talk of other front line types, perhaps even the F-15-like Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker, visiting next year’s Paris Salon. Let’s hope so.

Apart from the eleventh hour presence of the Fulcrums, the only other visitor of any real novelty was the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 Unducted Fan propfan demonstrator. A true vision of the future of medium range air transport? Well, only the future itself will tell for sure but it is hard to ignore fuel burn savings of up to a third against the latest of the new jetliners from the Boeing, Airbus and the Fokker stables. Despite a lowering in the cost of oil following the cessation of hostilities between Iran and Iraq, it is now a sure bet that fuel will remain fairly stable over the next half dozen years, something that won’t however assist new types like the MD-9 1 and 92.

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