Farnborough International Airshow 2012 Video Roundup

The biennial Farnborough International Airshow is underway in the UK, and that means that aerospace companies are spitting out a number of videos. I won’t be sharing them all, as quite frankly most of them are kind of dull, if not utter crap, but there are a few I thought were worth sharing.

First and foremost is this one, from the opening of the show. The sole flying AVRO Vulcan, XH588, flying in formation with the UK’s Red Arrow demonstration team. Just awesome, nothing else looks like the Vulcan. I think it is similar to the SR-71 Blackbird in that it just looks like something out of time, completely radical for its day.

And since EADS is good enough to sponsor XH588, I’ll give them the next spot. Besides, this is kind of interesting – Additive Layer Manufacturing. Which is basically a kind of 3D printing on industrial scale. ALM, and other such techniques, have the potential to radically alter manufacturing. Eventually ALM or some form of 3D printing will probably be in most homes, but first it will bring big changes to industrial processes.

I posted a couple of GE’s videos in my last post, on the CFMI CFM56 & LEAP-X, since they directly related to the LEAP-X, but they also touted the success of their new GEnx engine, powering the B787 & B747-8.

Bell Helicopter has this short video promoting the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey. I basically never get tired of watching it do its thing.

Airbus shared their highlights from the first two days of the show:

And if you thought the seeing the giant A380 yanked around the sky in that last clip was impressive, check out the full uncut version:

I found this one interesting. Heeding the call of nature on a flight last week, and noticing for the nth time how small aircraft lavatories are (I’m 6’6″ and generally a big guy), I found myself wondering just how the disabled passengers, or what it seems the industry refers to as Persons with Reduced Mobility (PRM), deal with it. Not very well I’d expect. But Airbus has an interesting new A320 lavatory design called Space-Flex PRM which will help. Basically there are two adjoining lavatories at the rear, as there generally are, but the walls are moving partitions. The flight crew can reconfigure them into one larger lavatory, which can accommodate a passenger in a wheelchair (presumably one of those narrow aircraft-aisle compatible ones). I think that’s an interesting concept, but we’ll see how many airlines adopt it. TAM Airlines is the first.

Boeing also has their highlights from the first day – they posted one for the second day, but for some reason it is private now they’ve reposted day 2:

They’re also touting their environmental designs:

Lockheed Martin jumped into the video fray as well:

They also released this look back at past LockMart Farnborough flight demos – not enough this year perhaps:

There will probably be more videos to come as the show continues. I’ll sort through them, so you don’t have to.