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Home | Update | Latest Issue | Gallery | FR Profile | Datafiles | FR 6/97 AERO OR ILA? By Wolfdietrich Hoeveler The AERO '97 was a success: More exhibitors, more visitors, and new markets. This exhibition has developed into the leading European trade fair of General Aviation. However, while the sun is shining over the AERO in Friedrichshafen, dark clouds are moving in over the ILA in Berlin. Not just a few people asked themselves in Friedrichshafen: What will become of the ILA? The big Plusses of the AERO: The markets and the trade visitors match. The high number of visiting aircraft, hundreds every day, show what the visitors want: information about new products and buying advice. 80 percent of the visitors are business visitors. Many are coming from Austria and Switzerland and have money to buy products. Unlike Berlin where visitors from Eastern Europe with no money are no attraction. The concept of the AERO - separation of exhibition halls and open displays, flying display only on the weekend - is a success. The exhibitors are content with the booth prices. Not so at the ILA in Berlin: Only little potential for profits, the state of Brandenburg will probably have to support the show with several million Marks, money that it doesn't have. There is no political support especially when it comes to flying displays of the jets of the German Air Force and its allies, or where it concerns placing significant order decisions as a signal to the market and the industry, something in which the British and French have become masters. Raising the booth prices to 398 Marks per square meter does not help to attract potential customers. This alone makes it difficult enough for ILA's organizers, the Messe Berlin and the German Aerospace Industry Association. Still, the air is becoming even thinner for ILA since Great Britain's industry has set out to finish the German international aerospace exhibition. Everybody seems to be in the campaign against Germany's aerospace industry: the magazines, daily newspapers, politicians, the industry, even the royal family. Rescheduling the Farnborough date to June in the year 2000 obviously was designed to deliver the deathblow to ILA. Nobody believes the reasoning for this action by saying that the Americans want to be in Europe only once a year. ILA in May and Farnborough in June? What is the solution for the German organizers? A new date will probably the only way to go. However, this will not work out without finding a theme that gives a signal to the market, a theme that gives the companies a reason to exhibit their products and that leaves the business visitors no chance but to visit the ILA. A tremendous task for the organizers. Sacrificing the ILA and the German aerospace industry for the sake of a united Europe and for keeping the partners happy can't be the way. This country needs the aerospace branch and the industry needs a good ILA - and a successful AERO. It must be the goal to have both, ILA and AERO. It's the only alternative. From page 4 of FLUG REVUE 6/97 Home | Update | Latest Issue | Gallery | FR Profile | Datafiles | FR 6/97 Copyright 1997 by Motor-Presse Stuttgart. All rights reserved. Last updated May 7, 1997