Considering the circumstances, NBAA, its membership and participants in the association’s 2001 convention in New Orleans were generally satisfied, despite the reduced numbers of attendees and exhibitors. This year, despite a struggling U.S. economy, show organizers for the Orlando event expect a show equal in scale to what had originally been anticipated in New Orleans. That would mean a static display of about 140 aircraft, 1,000 exhibitors and some 30,000 visitors. And if the economy begins to rebound before the NBAA 2002 opens, it could become the largest ever.
Maybe it’s appropriate that after the cataclysmic events of last year, the NBAA’s 55th Annual Meeting and Convention will be held next to Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom.
Although the industry was able to salvage a greatly scaled down exhibition in New Orleans last December, it never came near the numbers that had been projected for the originally scheduled conclave in September.
