FARNBOROUGH—Paris Air Show organizers opened reservations for the 2025 edition last March, and sales have been brisk, CEO Guillaume Bourdeloux says.
The event is scheduled for June 16-22. “Chalets are selling like hotcakes,” he says here at Farnborough Airshow. “One chalet line is sold out. Overall, the booking trend is the same as in 2019.” Moreover, exhibitors tend to request more space. “It is a nice problem to have, but we do face a growth problem.”
The show's team has been largely renewed. Bourdeloux replaced Gilles Fournier, and Emmanuel Viellard replaced Patrick Daher as secretary general. The organizing company, SIAE, is a subsidiary of GIFAS, the French aerospace industry lobbying association. GIFAS has a new CEO, Frederic Parisot, who replaced Pierre Bourlot.
Bourdeloux and his team are aiming for at least as many exhibitors and visitors as in the pre-COVID era, he emphasizes. The latest edition, in 2023, came close, with more than 292,000 visitors, comprising 127,000 professionals and 165,000 general public showgoers. The number of exhibitors surpassed 2,500. “The community needed to gather, and did so in excellent conditions,” Bourdeloux says.
Among new features in 2025, the space industry will be made more visible. The pavilion that accommodated French space agency CNES and the European Space Agency will be expanded to include more space industry players, including those in the burgeoning "new space" sector. “That will be a step toward increasing the importance of space at our show,” Bourdeloux says.
The Paris Air Mobility area, which featured electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles and a related conference, was a success in highlighting that industry. In 2025, nevertheless, urban air mobility exhibitors will be treated more conventionally, no longer being grouped in a dedicated zone.
Hiring will be a focus again. It will start with the Careers Plane, showing the youth what aerospace production jobs consist of. Professionals will demonstrate manufacturing processes. A feminization constituent is being added, as female role models will be highlighted during a conference.
The Paris Air Lab, the event's innovation zone, will continue to focus on aviation's efforts to reduce its environmental footprint. In 2025, that may be tweaked to illustrate the challenges of certifying new, greener aircraft, Bourdeloux explains. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing may be part of featured innovations, he adds.
In 2023, the Paris Air Lab was not air-conditioned, and visitors sometimes found the air temperature too high inside the temporary structure. Organizers wondered: Would using air-conditioning be a solution? However, because attendees are opening and closing doors frequently, the cool air would be consistently replaced with warm air. Energy consumption would be disproportionate, and organizers are still looking for an answer.
The issue illustrates how high environmental concerns are in their priorities. “We will do our best to have every aircraft flying on sustainable aviation fuels,” Bourdeloux says. “Ground equipment, such as tugs, will be electrified.”
While some visitors of the 2023 edition, such as state delegations, still had plastic passes, all 2025 passes will be printed on paper. They will be recycled, and badge holders and lanyards re-used. The catalog will be available in digital format only.
The presence of carpets in the aisles is still being debated. In 2023, it was reusable thanks to a precut square format. In 2025, visitors might simply walk on concrete—an approach some other shows have adopted.
As for show access, traffic jams complicated the first days of 2023 iteration of the event. “Muscle memory was lost during COVID,” Bourdeloux says. Organizations outside SIAE underwent normal staff changes, and procedures were forgotten in the process, he says.
The new metro line has been delayed, and visitors will have to wait until 2027 to benefit from direct underground transportation from the center of Paris.
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