The 2015 Dubai Air Show opened for business on Sunday. Cities in the United Arab Emirates like Dubai and Abu Dhabi have become major aviation hubs over the last two decades and carriers based in the Middle East such as Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways have become powerful global players. As a result, the Dubai Air Show, which is held every two years at the Al Makhtoum International Airport located in a desert just outside the city, has become a major industry trade event on par with the Paris and Farnborough airshows.
The 2015 Dubai Air Show opened on Sunday. It’s grown to become one the industry’s most important event, together with Paris and Farnborough in the UK. Image credit Adam Senatori.
The two world’s largest plane makers, Boeing and Airbus, are present here and so is GE Aviation, which is supplying many of their planes with jet engines.
The highlight of the first day was a brand new Emirates Airbus A380 that can hold a combined 615 people in economy and business class. This makes it the world’s largest passenger jet measured by the number of people it can fly.
The GP7200 jet engine made by Engine Alliance uses technology from the GE90, the world’s largest and most powerful engine. Image credit Adam Senatori.
The plane is powered by four GP7200 engines. The engines were developed by Engine Alliance, a joint venture between GE and Pratt & Whitney. At the core of the engine is technology GE originally developed for the GE90, the world’s largest and most powerful jet engine.
GE Reports is at the show. We will bring you daily dispatches here as well as on our Twitter and Periscope channels @ge_reports. On Sunday, we got exclusive access inside the Emirates world’s largest passenger jet as well as Qatar Airways’ brand new A380.
Subscribe to our social media channels. There’s much more in store. In the meantime, enjoy some of the best moments from Day One of the show as captured by pilot and aviation photographer Adam Senatori.
Visitors can right walk up to many of the planes at the Dubai Air Show. We will bring you the experience on our Periscope channel @ge_reports. Image credit Adam Senatori.
A visitor poses next to the front landing gear of the world’s largest passenger plane, a brand new Emirates Airbus A380 that can hold 615 travelers. Image credit Adam Senatori.
Unlike the airshows in Paris and Farnborough, the Dubai show is held at an airport at the edge of a desert. Despite the large number of visitors, the open space sometimes allows visitors to feel like are attending a private show. Image credit Adam Senatori.
The afternoons are typically filled with the roar of flyovers and today was no different. Image credit Adam Senatori.
Airbus brought to Dubai its newest plane, the Airbus A350 XWB, for the first time. GE makes composite trailing edges for the plane’s wings. Image credit Adam Senatori.
A view through a GEnx engine powering a Qatar Airways Dreamliner visiting the show. Adam Senatori took the shot during the “golden hour,” when fine desert dust hovering over the horizon colors the sunlight butter yellow just before sunset. Image credit Adam Senatori.