Paris Air Show 2015
 

The Paris Air Show is still on this weekend (20-21 June) for anybody in town and looking for something different to do. The easiest way to get there is to take the RER B to Le Bourget where shuttle buses are waiting for the trains. Another interesting experience is to take bus 152 at Porte de la Villette to the Musée de l'Air stop. (You will see the suburbs as you have never seen them before.) There is an air show ticket booth and entrance right to the left of the museum and it is much, much less crowded than the main entrance. Tickets are 14 euros.

I made a little video to show the ambience of the event yesterday :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JrCYUhZ_BI

There is also a full report that I made in 2013 and to which I added a few new pictures:
http://tinyurl.com/norea6m

Here is the official site for the air show, which lists what planes will be flying in the afternoon: http://www.siae.fr/EN

Wonderful, as always, kerouac! Thank you so much for taking the film and for posting it for all of us!

I especially liked seeing how the crowds were dressed -- that perennial question about how we commoners ought to dress in magical Paris. The folks there could easily have been on a street here in Garmisch.

I liked seeing the food trucks -- waffles, crepes, hamburgers. Was surprised not to see any Wurst.

You used the pronoun "we" for the line that "we're all airplane geeks" or something like that. I think I remember your saying one time that you worked for an airline for most of your adult life -- does that mean you are truly an airplane geek? I am; I feel about airports and airlines the way Johnny Cash used to sing about trains. So many possibilities . . .

Anyway, thanks for posting!!

s

Ha, actually I have no interest in airplanes at all, but an event like that piques one's interest no matter what.

I was amused by the photo of the Airstream trailer turned food wagon. The Airstream is a unique relic of American esthetics-meeting-commerce. Its glistening metallic body suggested flying along America's endless highways, the ultimate in streamlining as defined by the early airliners (think DC-3, which changed the world and summed up the final scene of Casablanca.) Owners gathered together in wolf packs to roam like much-better-groomed motorcycle gangs. Yet often it was trundling behind some of the most grotesque examples of useless streamlining, the 1960s land-yacht chrome-mobiles.
So yes, I understand why a non-plane-spotter could dig into the airshow. And I am copying down the travel details.

My wife and I thought we might be good to ourselves by spending the night near CDG before our early flight to Boston last week.

When I looked at rates online, everyone was either sold out or asking ferocious prices, even down near Le Bourget.

Next morning I discovered it was the air show! So G7 picked us up at 7!