[6] The following year, a dedicated air show was held at the Grand Palais[7] from 25 September to 17 October, during which 100,000 visitors turned out to see products and innovations from 380 exhibitors.

[citation needed] The air show continued to be held at the Grand Palais, and from 1949 flying demonstrations were staged at Paris Orly Airport.

[13] The 1967 air show was opened by French President Charles de Gaulle, who toured the exhibits and shook hands with two Soviet cosmonauts and two American astronauts.

[12] Prominently displayed by the Soviet Union was a three-stage Vostok rocket, such as the one that had carried Yuri Gagarin into space on April 12, 1961.

"[14] The American exhibit, the largest at the fair, featured the F-111 swing-wing fighter bomber,[14] a replica of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St.

[16] A full-size model of the supersonic Concorde was displayed by the French and British,[14] auguring its successful first flight on March 2, 1969.

[17] "The largest plane in the world," the Boeing 747 jet airliner, arrived on June 3, after flying non-stop from Seattle, Washington,[18] and the Apollo 8 command module, charred by its re-entry, was there flanked by the Apollo 9 astronauts, but the most-viewed exhibit was the supersonic Concorde, which made its first flight over Paris as the show opened.

[19] The Soviet TU-144 supersonic airliner was flown to Le Bourget for the 1971 show,[20][21] drawing comparisons with the French Concorde.

[29] Celebration of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight to Le Bourget fifty years ago recalled that historic event.

"[38] Exhibiting at the show, Airbus, Boeing, and McDonnell Douglas/Fokker vie for the 150-seat airline market, while Rolls-Royce/Japan, General Electric/Snecma (CFM), and Pratt & Whitney contest for their engines.

A novelty was Air Transat, a light aircraft trans-Atlantic race from Le Bourget to Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and back,[40] won by a twin engine Piper Navaho[41] and a Beechcraft Bonanza.

[42] The American Space Shuttle Enterprise was flown around Paris and towered over other exhibits,[43] but "much more intriguing"[44] were replicas of two twin-engined fighters, the British Aerospace ACA[45] and French Dassault Breguet ACX.

[57] Richard Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who flew a Voyager non-stop around the world without refueling, were present, but their aircraft was not.

[70] The flying display included the Bell-Boeing V-22 tilt-rotor, the Airbus Beluga Super Transporter, the Eurofighter 2000, the Rockwell-MBB X-31 high-manoeuvrability fighter demonstrator, the McDonnell Douglas C-17 military transport, the Eurocopter EC135 civil helicopter, the Sukhoi Su-35 fighter, and the Daimler-Benz Aerospace Dornier 328-100, and for the first time on static the Boeing 777, Saab Gripen, Atlas Cheetah Mirage and Cessna Citation X.

[73] IAR Brasov featured a prototype Anti-Tank Optronic Search and Combat System (SOCAT) helicopter, an upgrade of the IAR-330 Puma.

[80] Boeing introduced scale models of their Sonic Cruiser which would reach speeds approaching Mach 0.98,[81] together with a walk-through hologram.

[84] Dassault featured a model of the new Falcon FNX business jet that is projected to fly 10,500 kilometers at Mach 0.88.

[86] The Concorde F-BTSD made its farewell landing at Le Bourget on June 14, the opening day,[87] and the Dassault's Mirage 2000 and Rafale put on a show overhead.

[88] Pilotless planes, such as the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk[89] and General Atomics Predator drew attention.

[109] The 48th International Paris Air Show took place in 2009 and marked a hundred years of technological innovation in aeronautics and space conquest.

[111] A demo A380 was damaged the day before the exhibition opened and needed a replacement;[112][113] while the new Airbus A400M Atlas military transport aircraft had an engine failure, but could still perform some demonstration flights.

[114] The 2015 show, held from June 15 to June 21, 2015, saw the new Dassault Falcon 8X, Airbus A350 XWB and Bombardier CS300 and received 351,584 visitors, 2,303 exhibitors over 122,500 square metres of exhibition space, 4,359 journalists from 72 countries and 130 billion euros in purchases and "cemented its position as the world's largest event dedicated to the aerospace industry".

[118] The air show ended with 866 aircraft commitments totalling $60.9 billion (130 firm orders, 562 LoI/MoU, 119 options and 55 options on LoIs): 388 for Airbus including 243 newly launched A321XLRs and 85 A220s, 232 for Boeing including 200 737 MAXes for IAG, 145 for ATR and 78 for Embraer; 558 narrowbodies, 62 widebodies, 93 regional jets and 153 turboprops.

Trying to pull out of the subsequent dive, the aircraft broke up and crashed, destroying 15 houses and killing all six on board and eight on the ground; a further sixty people received serious injuries.