Show Report

ILA 2004

Gostar den Daas | May 2004

The tradition of the ILA dates back nearly one hundred years and reflects the development of aviation. From the outset, it was an international exhibition. The air shows were always trade fairs and at the same time a meeting place for aviation enthusiasts. First the show was held at Frankfurt and Berlin-Tempelhof. After WWII the show was relocated at the German main land. The fall of the Berlin Wall enabled the International Aerospace Exhibition to return to its original location. For the first time, ILA 1992 was held at Berlin-Schönefeld Airport.

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Nowadays you can still taste some of the old days when entering Schonefeld. Especially the surrounding of the maintenance area hasn't changed much. When this side of Berlin was still East Germany, Schonefeld was it´s main airport. At present the airport is the third airport of the reunited Berlin. There are plans to heavily extend and modernize it and rename it Berlin - Brandenburg.

Unfortunately the exhibition and air show wasn't very spectacular. For instance there were no Russian or Eastern aircraft, except the Lithuanian Mi-8. (note: the An-124 left before Saturday) And again the special visitors were parked to close, so photographing the German Conny and the Do-24 ATT (with turboprops) wasn´t possible during the Saturday show.

The organization had a hard job when the weather turned out for the worst, with rain the whole afternoon. Because of the low cloud cover the jet demonstrations where banned till the end of the day, when the weather cleared a bit and it stopped raining.

Besides these few setbacks it was a nice show, we especially liked the 'Eagle' Tornado. What a fine airbrush job. Lufthansa was present with it´s first A330 and the Luftwaffe showed an operational Eurofighter and the Tigre attack heli. Airbus was present with the A318, the A340-600 and the A300ST. The ILA will be back at Schonefeld in 2006.


D-ICKS, CD-2

D-CXXX, DC-3

D-HBZS, Bell 212

43+70, Tornado

102, Mi-8

ZD407, Harrier

F-WWIA, A318

F-WWCA, A340

D-FUKM, An-2

OE-EAS, Vought F4

N6123C, B-25

SE-DXS, Vampire

div, Alpha Jet

PT5R (98+25), EC665

RP-C2403, Do-24

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