Leaving aside the Franco-German squabbling over EADS in recent weeks, the European aerospace industry is heading for Paris with some major success stories behind it. Since Paris 2003, Airbus has consolidated its leadership in the air transport market and made a successful start to the A380 flight test programme; Ariane is back on the rails, with a restructured launch industry behind it; the Eurofighter partners have clinched the Tranche 2 contract; and Tiger and NH90 continue to notch up major export successes. Meanwhile, Dassault has wrapped up the order for a batch of 59 Rafale combat aircraft in the fully-multirole F3 standard and will be displaying its brand-new flyby-wire Falcon 7X bizjet, which seems well placed to benefit from the bizjet market upswing. The French firm has also positioned itself to play the lead role in Europe in the emerging UCAV sector.
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