This week’s International Society of Transport Aircraft Traders (ISTAT) conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., drew some 1300 attendees–a new record. Apparently, the conference grows larger every year, and as incoming president Joe Ozimek noted, ISTAT has become America’s airshow–minus any equipment parked on an airport ramp and fighter jets flying overhead at ear-shattering altitudes. Unfortunately, the presentations proved rather pedestrian and Airbus COO for customers John Leahy had to return to Toulouse to attend to some “pressing business,” leaving plenty of room for speculation, particularly about the single-aisle market.
On Monday, March 14, the first conference day, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft president Gary Scott perhaps made the news of the show with a guarantee that Bombardier would sell as many C Series airplanes by the time it enters service as Airbus had sold A320s at the time in it entered service. That means 300 airplanes by late 2013. To date, Bombardier has drawn orders for 90 C Series narrowbody jets, leading to the obvious question: from where will the rest come over the next two or three years?
Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with New Jersey Monthly magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for Aviation International News in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.
