Opinion: Aero 2025 reflects new realities

Geneva’s European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE) is aimed at the turbine market. Then there’s the famed Paris and Farnborough airshows, which add the airline and military markets to their list of exhibitors.

This year’s Aero Friedrichshafen, which is held in Germany and aimed at the entire spectrum of GA, is expected to draw more than 735 exhibitors and 32,000 visitors from more than 81 nations. Aero has traditionally catered to the light end of GA, but this year’s show is different in that there’s a strong big-iron contingent—Gulfstreams, Dassault Falcons, Cessna Citations, Beechcraft King Airs, Embraer Phenoms, Bombardier Challengers, and more. It’s a deliberate move to expand Aero’s appeal—one that’s perhaps been motivated by a disturbing trend.

Several bizjets on static display at last year’s EBACE show were defaced by environmental activists armed with spray paint. Some chained themselves to parked jets’ landing gear.

Environmental responsibility is a main concern of green parties throughout Europe, and some environmental activists are more radical than others. Activists have even taken to gluing their hands to exhibit tarmacs. Police response has varied. Some authorities have freed demonstrators’ hands using solvents to loosen the glue’s grip. Others have ripped hands free without the benefit of solvents. European environmental activism has shown an ugly side.

That’s likely a reason EBACE has said it will not have any more static displays. Word around Aero is that EBACE’s loss may have helped—or even sparked—Aero’s ambition to expand its appeal to the big-iron world. To help prevent any spray-painting or other demonstrations, Aero has put up fencing and checkpoints around the airplanes on static display. That would have been unimaginable a year ago, when Aero seemed somehow isolated from the world outside its immediate purview.

Yet another example of political intrusion has filled Aero’s halls. As I write this, stock markets around the world have just this morning rebounded after President Donald J. Trump proposed a 90-day suspension of certain tariffs on imports to the United States from Europe and many other nations. While some increases were reduced, there was a notable exception: Tariffs on imports from China were increased to 125 percent.

Trump, in the belief that tariffs will balance U.S. trade deficits by penalizing imports from foreign nations, argues that tariffs—taxes on imports—will spur the American economy. And that prices of imported products, inflated by tariffs passed along to U.S. consumers, will drive new investment in more American factory capacity and consumption of products made domestically. Meanwhile, foreign exporters to the United States face large losses in market share. The problem is that foreign nations will in turn raise tariffs on U.S. imports. I’m no financial expert, but in the past this sort of retaliation has led to trade wars—and economic isolation and downturn on a global scale.

Meanwhile, the unpredictable nature of Trump’s trade policy has caused uncertainty. The issues surrounding American tariffs—not to mention the future of Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—seem to have been floating around many exhibitors’ heads during the Aero show.

As an American, some of them apparently thought I had some sort of inside knowledge about future U.S. policy, so it was interesting to listen to their questions. As exporters to the United States, they stood to lose much business with rising tariffs. Diamond and Daher, for example, are big exporters to the United States. Big GA suppliers like Pratt & Whitney Canada are believed to be tariff-exempt owing to their participation in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Again, conversations of this sort wouldn’t have happened in Aeros of yore.

Meanwhile, Aero carries on doing what it does best. In addition to showing off legacy technology and aircraft, there’s heavy emphasis, forums, and displays this year on hydrogen power, electric vertical-lift aircraft and propulsion systems, and sustainable fuel for turbine aircraft already in service. As for the first U.S.-certified next-generation, eco-friendly, high-efficiency aircraft, they may not be approved for years to come. But know that you’ll see them first at Aero.