Two years after 9/11, Dubai’s biennial air show will declare itself to be firmly back to business as usual when it opens next month (December 7 to 11) in the United Arab Emirates. Last time, the event convincingly put on a brave face in the wake of 9/11 and the U.S.-led war against Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan (just 500 miles north). This time, the Middle East airshow will be staged against a backdrop of grave unrest in post-war Iraq and ever-worsening tension between Israel and its neighbors.
Nonetheless, at press time organizers of the 2003 show–staged about a month later than normal due to the Muslim holiday of Ramadan– were predicting that it would be back to the scale of the 1999 event. In 2001, about 50 exhibitors–10 percent of the 1999 total of 500 companies–pulled out of the show in response to world tension and the air-transport-industry crisis. The exhibitor list this year is drawn from 33 different countries and features 10 national pavilions, including, for the first time, those representing the industries of the Ukraine and Jordan.
