Community Enthusiasm On Exhibit Floor Confirmed By Business
Aircraft Sales
By ANN Correspondent Dave Higdon
Smoke without mirrors. That seems to be the prevailing
impression from the 58th Annual convention of the National Business
Aviation Association Convention in Orlando. Maybe the better cliche
should be, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." 'Cause there sure
seems to be plenty of fire in this year's hurricane-displaced
convention as it's playing out at the Orange County Convention
Center.
The smoke at this event isn't just a magician's tool. Action on
the exhibit-hall floor reflects a hotter-than-usual sales market -
which matches the other record-setting traits of this NBAA meeting.
Just look at some of the numbers:
Triple digit order announcements - more than 100 alone on Day
Two of NBAA. Cessna announced the sale of 28 Citations, adding to
an existing $6 billion -- yeah, with a "b" -- backlog; Eclipse
added 80 to a sales book that already stood at 2,277; Piaggio,
with its freshly certificated, sexier-than-your-shirt Avanti II
(below), logged in another 36 orders. Fractionals, charter,
aircraft-management firms and individuals were all represented
among the buying-like-crazy crowd.
Forecasters predict strong jet sales during the next 10 years --
one even saying orders could exceed 15,000 if you include VLJs. And
that forecast didn't include visionary Linden Blue's newly
announced Spectrum 33. New variants of existing aircraft should
help feed this growth - aircraft like the Citation Encore+ from
Cessna, the Bombardier Challenger 605 and Learjet 60XR (below)
announced earlier this week, and the long-anticipated
Sino-Swearingen SJ30-2, which earned its wings just prior to the
convention's opening.
And, as the man on TV likes to say, there's more. Gulfstream
Aerospace announced the months-ahead-of-schedule approval for the
G150 and Adam Aircraft was able to announce the first customer
delivery of its A500 - as well as its plans to move into
certification on the A700 VLJ. And Brazil's Embraer firmed its
plans to expand into the very light- and light-jet markets - as it
had already announced - by giving its two new birds new names, the
Phenom 100 (below) and Phenom 300. Embraer's expansive new exhibit
drove home the company's growing commitment to business aviation as
much as Cessna's new -- and visually stunning -- exhibit.
Surprised? Maybe we shouldn't be. Numbers for the convention
floor previously reported included record numbers of vendors
exhibiting, record numbers of booth spaces sold and major growth in
the number of companies exhibiting at NBAA for the first time -
above the century mark.
Even Day Two attendance numbers seem to hint at the possibility
of a jump over the numbers from NBAA's last visit to the Orange
County Convention Center. A whopping 26,788 were registered as of
Thursday, November 10. That's only 1,586 short of the 28,374 total
for all three days of NBAA spent in Orlando in October 2003.
And that convention was held where it was originally planned on
its original dates - not uprooted and replanted nearly a 1,000
miles from its originally planned locale.
Sure, with 110 airplanes, the NBAA Static Display at Orlando
Executive Airport isn't near the record numbers of year's past,
when upward of 150 airplanes stood by for delegate examination. And
there's still a whole day to go.
Thanks to the schedule change, the 2005 NBAA convention ends on
Friday instead of the traditional Thursday. With many people
planning to give themselves a weekend in Mickey-land, Friday just
could push NBAA's unexpected Orlando year above any previous
Orlando convention.
But even without attendance matching the 31,000-plus set in Las
Vegas several visits back, NBAA 2005 reflects a business-aviation
community as much on the grow as it is on the go -- and itching to
go on to new heights.