FARNBOROUGH, England - They say it was a bit cooler here today, and perhaps that's true. But to me the humidity seemed higher, so it felt even more sweltering at the air show grounds.

An umbrella came in handy today at Farnborough - as a sun shade.

Flight Daily had an interesting item today about the heat. It seems that temperatures inside some of the exhibit halls reached the low 90s yesterday as air conditioning systems struggled to keep up. There was a power outage in the media center. And at one pavilion the glass doors shattered because of the heat difference between outside and in!

Much to my surprise, another hot topic around here today was a couple of blogs I did back in April and May. The initial blog and its follow up compared the various attributes of the 747-8 Freighter and the A380F.

Apparently some reporters were contacted this week by people who question our data and our freighters story.

So I sat down for about 90 minutes this morning with Reuters' Paris and New York correspondents. I wanted to make sure they understood that if anything, we've actually been giving Airbus the benefit of the doubt on their A380 freighter claims.

My colleague, Randy Tinseth, our marketing V.P. for the 747-8 program, joined me for the talk. We addressed the misperception that since the 747-8 is an "older" airframe, and the A380 is a new airplane, then the Airbus airplane has to be more efficient.

As we explained, overall airplane efficiency is based on three things: 1) structural weight, 2) aerodynamics - or wing efficiency, and 3) engine efficiency.

And no matter how you slice it, number one, the A380 weighs more than the 747-8. Using Airbus' own numbers (which we do in our comparisons), they are 74 tonnes heavier.

We got a chance to weigh-in on the freighter story today. The new 747-8F offers the lowest ton-mile cost of any large freighter.

In aerodynamics, the 747-8 has a new wing, but we'll give the A380 a slight advantage there, although the wings are very comparable.

And as far as the engine goes, ours is better. It's the technologically-advanced 787 engine optimized for the 747-8.

So overall, the 747-8F is clearly the more efficient freighter.

One funny moment broke up our extended technical discussion when one of the reporters pointed out that the A380 is perceived to be opening up a whole new kind of freight market - big quantities of cargo flown nonstop across wide distances. To which (I couldn't help myself) I replied, "You mean point to point?" That brought more than a few chuckles all around.

Another point we made was that a bigger airplane should be more efficient. But even though the A380 has more payload capacity, it's actually less efficient.

Randy Tinseth put things in perspective when he said that we could talk about these numbers for days. But the fact is we provide our data to the airlines. We have an airplane that's been in service now for a number of years. It's well understood. Everyone knows how much it can carry, how much the airplane weighs, and what its maximum capability is.

So we're sorry if people get upset about our numbers. Our objective is to provide our customers the right data so they can evaluate our airplanes. And the outcome is that in the last 12 months we've sold 50 freighters. In the last 12 months the other guys have sold 10 freighters.

Since they launched their A380 freighter, we've had about 80% market share. And that's the bottom line.

I couldn't close today's blog without mentioning a small item in today's Daily Telegraph. It sets the scene during the last time Britain suffered through so much sustained heat in July - it was back in 1911.

The story manages to weave in Queen Mary, Winston Churchill, and a guy walking six miles through town, shedding clothes along the way. Funny stuff. Read it here.

Not quite such desperate times here in the heat wave of 2006. But I can sum up today's weighty topics by saying that after several days in the sauna that is Farnborough I think I must have achieved some efficiencies myself - by sweating off a few pounds.