FIA Connect 2020 organisers praise ‘landmark event’

More than 14,000 del­e­gates from 97 coun­tries across the world joined last week’s FIA Con­nect vir­tu­al pro­gramme, the world’s first major dig­i­tal trade event for the aero­space and defence indus­tries.

Opened by Sec­re­tary of State for Busi­ness, Ener­gy and Indus­tri­al Strat­e­gy, Alok Shar­ma MP, and Sec­re­tary of State for Defence, Ben Wal­lace MP, 240 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from com­pa­nies such as Air­bus, BAE Sys­tems, Emi­rates, Leonar­do and Rolls-Royce all con­tributed to the five-day con­fer­ence pro­gramme, which was broad­cast by FINN (Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al News Net­work).

This also includ­ed the launch of Glob­al Urban Air Sum­mit (GUAS) 2.0, which fea­tured speak­ers from key com­pa­nies in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, such as Boe­ing, EHang, EmbraerX, Hon­ey­well, Lil­i­um, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space and Volo­copter.

Speak­ing about the week, Gareth Rogers CEO of Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al said: “Farn­bor­ough has an endur­ing rep­u­ta­tion for tech­no­log­i­cal inge­nu­ity and through FIA Con­nect our team demon­strat­ed an inge­nu­ity of our own. In just a mat­ter of months, we cre­at­ed an event that enabled the glob­al aero­space indus­try to have vital con­ver­sa­tions at a time it is endur­ing the biggest chal­lenge in its his­to­ry.

“FIA Con­nect will serve as a land­mark event which ensured Farn­bor­ough Inter­na­tion­al con­tin­ued to pro­vide a strate­gic plat­form for organ­i­sa­tions through­out the world to come togeth­er even dur­ing a time when we can­not meet in per­son.”

Near­ly 460 online meet­ings also took place through the FIA Con­nect plat­form, as part of the week’s Meet the Buy­er pro­cure­ment event, which saw 75 buy­ers meet 244 sup­pli­ers.

And FIA Con­nect con­clud­ed with Farn­bor­ough Fri­day: day ded­i­cat­ed to inspir­ing young peo­ple and engag­ing them in the wealth of career oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able through­out the indus­try.

As well as inspi­ra­tional speak­ers, there was prac­ti­cal sup­port and guid­ance aimed at encour­ag­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to focus on the STEM sub­jects, such as sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and maths.