Should the airstairs be carpeted?
Joe Hart, NBAA director of static displays, didn’t need a moment to consider after being waved over by a pair of contractors as he checked on the display’s set-up progress from his golf cart at Orlando Executive Airport (ORL) late Saturday afternoon. These airstairs were brought in specifically to service the luxurious VIP executive airliners being shown at NBAA 2018, but after a brief discussion of safety, aesthetics, and the technical issues of attaching carpet to metal, the decision was quickly made: no carpet.
It was just one of the thousands of pieces that go into the convention’s annual static display, or what Hart and his colleagues call “the world’s largest puzzle.”
This year as always the pieces include flagship business aircraft from all the major OEMs and a variety of gleaming preowned aircraft. “But the puzzle changes every single year, as aircraft come into or leave OEM fleets, and their exhibit spaces expand or contract a little each year,” said Hart, who has directed the displays for 19 NBAA conventions. “It’s an ebb and flow.”
This year, some 90 aircraft are being shown. “The number sounds a little smaller than in years past and it is smaller, but our airplanes are just getting bigger and bigger, so the space is getting used up,” said Hart. “We’re still at capacity and sold out.” The display area is actually “very compact,” he said, and easily covered by guests.
Over the course of the gathering, some 10,000 to 12,000 attendees will visit the static display, accessible by shuttle buses from the Orange County Convention Center, the exhibit hall host for NBAA 2018. Dropped off right at the entrance to the display, visitors are drawn into the exhibit area by the carefully positioned aircraft.
“We go through some 30 plans for arranging the aircraft each year, revised in consultation with the exhibitors, before the final layout is set," he said. This year, in addition to the new aircraft from the OEMs, the International Aircraft Dealers Association (formerly the National Aircraft Resale Association) is staging a display of members’ preowned aircraft.
Hart and Tracy Tippett, the static display manager, are the only NBAA personnel involved with the static exhibition, but “there’s probably over 1,000 people, if you count each and every one,” involved in the setup, Hart said. That includes contractors from Freeman convention services, the tent companies, tug team from Lectro, caterers, and teams from the exhibitors themselves.
As usual, work on the display started early this month. “We spend about two weeks preparing for exhibitors to arrive,” said Hart. The team uses GPS and lasers to lay out the exhibition areas, with a maximum one-foot error tolerance on the exhibition stands’ dimensions. Aircraft from the OEMs start arriving on the Saturday before show start and the preowned aircraft being shown typically arrive Sunday. Arrival times are coordinated with invasion-like precision, to ensure all can be moved into position efficiently.
“We try to manage the arrival pace of eight to 10 aircraft per hour,” said Hart. “It’s a big balancing act to make sure we don’t have aircraft sitting around” waiting to be towed to their exhibit areas. “Our goal is to have all aircraft in position during daylight hours,” he said. “Our number-one goal is to increase the safety aspect.”
No more tower personnel are required than the usual ORL staff during the convention. One added controller works a usually vacant Traffic Management Unit position from the tower that handles some airborne traffic between Orlando International (MCO), Kissimmee Gateway Airport (ISM), and ORL. On arrivals and departures days, an NBAA staffer attached to the FAA’s ATC command center team in Warrenton, Virginia, also serves as a liaison with tower personnel.
But the static display activity doesn’t affect transient aircraft flying in for the convention, show display, or any other reason. “The [display] ramp is segregated just enough from normal aircraft operations areas that as soon as it’s set up,” normal airport activity can resume.
Hart is also responsible for the indoor static display at the convention center, and the two showcases are “a lot more linked behind the scenes than a lot of people know,” he said. For example, the design elements of the show’s “look and feel” for a particular year are replicated at both exhibitions. Hart also “finds the solution for towing all the aircraft to the convention center in the middle of the night,” which requires finding street routes that can accommodate the aircrafts wingspans; this year the Pilatus PC-24 twinjet, slated for indoor display, had to be withdrawn because it couldn’t fit on the streets; the PC-12 was able to navigate the route in previous years.
Hart also directs the static displays at ABACE and EBACE, but the annual U.S. gathering “is absolutely by far our biggest workload,” he said, given “the number and size of the aircraft, and the level of experience” required for the setup.
