At Farnborough 2026 with the IMD Aerospace Practice

Silvia Flores and I will be at the Farnborough International Airshow this year — 20–24 July 2026, at the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in Hampshire, United Kingdom — joined by colleagues from the IMD International Search Group Aerospace Practice. We travel as a Practice, not as a single firm.

Farnborough is one of the two moments each cycle when the global aerospace calendar concentrates in one place. OEMs, tier-ones, MROs, defense primes, and the newer generation of advanced-air-mobility and space entrants use the week to move programs forward. Underneath the announcements, the quieter conversations that shape leadership hiring for the next two to three years also begin here — the ones our clients ask us to help them think through before a mandate is even framed.

Aerospace leadership is rarely a single-country problem

The programs our clients run cross jurisdictions by design. A plant in the Bajío or in the Casablanca corridor answers to a European or North American parent. A technical vice president based in Mexico is measured against certification bodies in the United States, Europe, and Asia at the same time. A program transfer inside an OEM’s global footprint is decided by executives sitting in three time zones on the same call. This is the geometry the IMD Aerospace Practice was built for: retained executive search delivered through independent, senior-led member firms that speak each region’s operating language and work off a shared method.

That structural fit matters more than it used to. In the last twelve months alone, we have seen program-transfer decisions accelerate, dual-source strategies push technical leadership into Mexico faster than the local pipeline can absorb, and certification bodies tighten their expectations around engineering leadership continuity. None of that gets solved by a national search — it gets solved by a coordinated one.

What we will be available to discuss

Silvia leads Alder Koten’s manufacturing, supply-chain, and industrial-sales practice in Mexico, with deep aerospace exposure across the Bajío and the northern corridors. My role brings the broader IMD engagement, including cross-border programs where leadership hires span jurisdictions and reporting lines. With our IMD Aerospace colleagues on the ground, we will be available for private conversations on the questions our clients are actually asking us right now:

• What a technical vice president profile looks like when a program transfers from a US or European plant into Mexico
• How to build a bilingual engineering bench that certifying authorities on both sides of the Atlantic will accept
• Where the corridor differentials — Bajío, border, Guadalajara — sit today for aerospace program transfers, in comp, in supervisory density, and in ramp risk
• How to structure a retained search when the reporting line is matrixed across two or three countries

These are not questions with clean off-the-shelf answers. They are worth an hour of quiet conversation, which is what the show week is genuinely useful for.

To arrange a conversation

If you would like to meet at Farnborough — on the show floor, at a chalet, or over a coffee off-site — the simplest route is to reach the practice through the contact page and we will coordinate through IMD. We will hold a limited number of meetings during the trade days.

A short set of field notes will follow after the show. In the meantime, the aerospace positioning and the Practice’s approach to leadership hiring for the sector are laid out on the Aerospace, Defense & Aviation executive search page.

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Jose J. Ruiz is CEO and Managing Partner of Alder Koten, President of IMD International Search Group, and Chairman of Anker Bioss.