Hub with hubbub

IN A few years the Singapore Air Show, first held in 2008 and on for most of this week, has expanded to become Asia's largest plane fest. Some say it is already the world's fourth biggest such event, only behind the long-established Paris and Farnborough shows, as well as the more recently minted one in Dubai. And many exhibitors expect that Singapore will soon leave Dubai behind in its slipstream-not bad for a very small country that does not even make planes.

Yet Singapore does specialise in being a hub: in shipping, air travel, finance, freight-and now in the aircraft business. The tiny island is at the centre of an explosion in demand for passenger aircraft, which means that the world's plane manufactures all have to be at Singapore's air show. Some, such as Airbus, even launch new products there.

South-East Asia now boasts about as many orders for new passenger planes as aircraft in service: around 1,600 in both cases, estimates Centre for Aviation (CAPA), a market-research firm. In all of the Asia-Pacific region planes currently total 6,800, with 3,200 on order. Airbus is even more bullish: according to figures that it released at the airshow, the region's airlines will take delivery of about 11,000 new passenger and cargo aircraft worth $1.8 trillion over the next 20 years. That would be more than in North America and Europe.

With so much at stake in Asia-Pacific it does not come as a surprise that Airbus decided to unveil its brand-new A350 in Singapore. In Paris it had already flown the plane over the crowds, but in the city-state the A350 was parked on the tarmac and open for tours (pictured)-making it the star of the show. The new plane will compete directly with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner (and the Boeing 777) in the market for medium-sized long-haul aircraft. For easy comparison, a Dreamliner in the livery of Qatar Airways was helpfully parked just behind the A350; the Airbus seems much bigger than the Boeing.

About 800 of the A350s, which come in three versions with varying length of fuselage, have already been sold. Flight tests have reportedly been staged in Bolivia and Canada to show that the new plane can take off both in thin and freezing air. Most of the customers are big carriers, such as Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific. The question now is whether any of the growing number of Asia's low-cost carriers will go for it too.

One of the A350's main features is that more than half of it is made of composite materials, meaning it is lighter and less fuel-hungry than existing competitors. Airbus claims that the A350 is 25% more efficient in terms of 'cash-operating cost per seat' than the Boeing 777. Even if that turns out to be an exaggeration, any reduction in flying costs might persuade low-cost carriers to look at applying their business model to the long-haul market-something most have so far eschewed. In the region only Air Asia X, part of the larger Air Asia group, based in Malaysia, currently does low-cost on long haul.