SGA2012: So many aircraft, so little time.

SGA2012: So many aircraft, so little time.:

Flightglobal's plans for the Singapore Airshow 2012 are
well afoot. Looks like it's going to be a super busy week on the defence
side. There will be two of us covering
it, myself (@asiajetwatch) and my colleague @sivag.

Unfortunately, as is always the case at air shows, a lot of
the briefings clash with each other and with individual briefings I've set up.
Being a defence buff I'd be happy to go to ALL of the briefings, but there is
so little time and in any event I'll also be rushing to bash out stories.

Singapore's A Star, perhaps concerned about conflicting
with other events, has the most bizarre timing and location for a show-related
presser, at 5pm on Sunday before the show. The event is not even at the show site, but at a
golf club. How random is that?

One unfortunate scheduling decision is Dallas Airmotive's
opening of its Seletar service centre at 12pm on Monday, conflicting directly
with the official opening of Roll Royce's monster engine factory, which will
produce fan blades and the Trent 1000 power plant for the 787. The Rolls Royce opening is huge for
Singapore, and the prime minister will spend a few hours at the site. There can
be little doubt of which event the media will focus on.

I got a kick out of Boeing's thinly-veiled swipe at the F-35
in the title of one of its briefings: 'A brief examining the balanced and
evolutionary approach to fighter design versus the challenges of fielding a "revolutionary"
design affordably and on schedule."

The organisers seem to have finally posted an update of what will
be flying at the show. While the B-52 flyby will be sort of interesting in a 'check that off the list' sort of way, it's not a B-1B or B-2. Anyway, it's good to see US taxpayers' money at work.

I'm dubious that those MiG-29s of the RMAF Smokey Bandits
team will get airborne. They suffered mechanical issues at LIMA in December
(pictured above, on the ground), so not sure they'll get much airtime at the Singapore show.
In any case, how much do these guys actually get to practice given the well
known support problems with their cool, but Russian, aircraft?

The static park is looking healthy. The F-22 isn't
on the list notwithstanding the liberal use of this aircraft's image on the
landing page. Intriguingly the A330 MRTT is listed, although an Airbus presser
yesterday said only the ACJ318 private jet will be coming to the show.