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Farnborough BlogBy Diana Magnay, CNN  CNN reporter Jim Boulden -- unruffled by his virtual nosedive in a JSF simulator. YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- CNN Producer Diana Magnay provides a behind-the-scenes look at the Farnborough International Airshow. Tuesday, July 18 It's a lot more civilized starting at 8 a.m. with a cracking breakfast under your belt than at 3.30 a.m. which was how Monday began. And today the media frenzy at the show has died down. Behind the media viewing platform almost all the satellite trucks set up for live broadcasting the day before have left -- up on the balcony, just a few lone cameras doing their thing. It confirms what all the analysts said before this year's Farnborough: that this year more than any other was about Airbus vs. Boeing. Even Lockheed-Martin admitted they hardly get a look-in on the first days of the Paris or Farnborough airshows anymore. Team CNN have developed some definite chalet favorites. Top of the list is the media center at Boeing. There you can help yourself to fantastic fresh coffees, mini croissants and Danish pastries if it's a morning visit and at lunch there's eveything from the tenderest of cold beef to Spanish tortilla to boeuf en croute. With some cheesecake and blueberries to round it all off which an unnamed member of my team had fourths of. Airbus too has an impressive, suitably French selection of delicacies, though there's half as much space to eat it in and they're frosty about who they let in. Why we ended up eating tuna triangles in a forgotten corner of the Lockheed Martin chalet I just don't know. Perhaps they're spending so much on the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF F-35) they can't afford to feed hungry mouths. Our correspondent, Jim Boulden, provided a high-point when he crashed the Joint Strike Fighter into the sea from his cockpit simulator, rising spectacularly from an electronic ocean none the wiser. His instructor Clyde was a former F-16 pilot but his instructions were still not perfect. Jim's excuse was that the controls were very light to the touch. It seems from our interviews today that the whole JSF project needs delicate handling right now. There are questions over whether the U.S. military really needs a fifth generation stealth fighter, when it has the F-22 and F-18 doing a perfectly good job. But pull the plug and there are a host of international partners furious at the massive investments they've made. You can hear more about the Joint Strike Fighter in Jim's report on Wednesday on CNN Today. As we left the MiGs were once again tearing through the skies. Getting a closer look at them this time, their most extraordinary stunt is to stop and rear up, hanging in the sky like gigantic kites. My mission tomorrow -- finding a MiG pilot who can tell us what flying one of them is like. Monday, July 17  A SAAB Gripen fighter plane takes place in Monday's display. A truly sweltering day one for the 45th Farnborough Air Show. A sea of business suits and shiny faces, most of whom seemed to be crammed into one small conference room for the big event of the show: the Airbus press conference. If any one person stole the show today it was Christian Streiff, the new Airbus boss. It's been a truly catastrophic month for Airbus -- fresh delays in deliveries of the A380, the resignation of its key executives -- it really couldn't be a more complicated situation to take on. But Streiff stood up and said it straight. He wanted to draw a line under the past and get on with making Airbus great again, announcing a new extra-wide bodied plane which he's promising will be worth the wait. We'll see whether the airlines think so. And really, there wasn't much else that Airbus could do in the situation. It's all very well promising a next generation plane, but as they showed with the A380, it's deliveries that are the hard part. By the time the flying displays kicked off mid-afternoon you could really feel everyone's pace had slowed. Only the lucky few who'd managed to grab themselves buggies were still zipping around from one air-conditioned chalet to the next. The rest of us were only too glad to get the chance to stay still and stare at the awesome show going on up above. First off in the air was Airbus, stealing the show once more with a truly majestic flyover by the A340-600 and the superjumbo A380. The A380 may not all work inside but it definitely looks good when it flies -- amazing elegance for what is effectively a monster of a plane. And this time, unlike back in May at Heathrow, the landing was perfect. Then came the figher jets, tearing through the afternoon heat. The MiGs and Boeing's F-18 leaving a thunderous roar behind them as they performed stunt after stunt. Look at them and you can't help but wonder what it's like for those innocent civilians to whom these are instruments of war. A strange day to marvel in these powerful machines when violence rages through the Middle East. On Tuesday you can bet the real top executives at the show will be wending their ways back home. And noticeably this year, that may be in an easterly direction. You can really tell that there's a lot of money to be spent in the Middle East and Asia on aerospace toys at the moment. I don't dare look at the forecast, but I fear Tuesday may be hotter... 
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