Too Many Aerospace Trade Shows, Says AIA's Douglas
There are still too many aerospace trade shows, says John Douglass, president of the U.S. Aerospace Industries Association. “They should be reduced; they should all be scaled-back,” he told Show News.
“We haven’t picked any winners or losers, we just don’t want to see any new ones. And some of the smaller ones we want to see go away if they don’t become any more productive than they are today.”
What about the proposal two years ago by French-bashing Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation subcommittee on aviation, that the U.S. should launch its own show to replace Paris?
Absolutely not, says Douglass. “American industry doesn’t support an American show. We don’t see these things in a nationalistic sense; we have for some years now been gradually cutting down our profile — nothing to do with subsidies or politics, but in the modern world of the Internet and other mechanisms for marketing you don’t really need to get this many people together to sell airplanes.
“The shows have become very expensive and occasionally irritating. U.S. industry has been adopting a smaller show profile around the world and we don’t intend to add to that by creating an American show.” —John Morris
