Thoughts On inter airport Europe

Nov. 15, 2011
The GSE world, while international in activity, seems a manageable globe after I came back from my first visit to this major trade expo.

What to take in first after my first tour? Certainly, the sheer size of the exhibit space. Not just two big halls inside, but an outside pavilion just as immense. Having an outdoor exhibit in October in Germany seemed like an iffy proposition to me. Given the nature of GSE, however, the great outdoors is a fitting choice – maybe the only choice for this much variety of equipment. From squat pushbacks to towering deicers to working, full-scale belt loaders, the outdoor pavilion was a great place to learn.

I was told the industry was a bit short on new products. However, I didn’t find that to be the case. I was barely 30 minutes into the show’s first day when I attended a JBT AeroTech press conference introducing four pieces of equipment, including a redesigned B600 making its industry debut. This one certainly had some flair to it with curved wheel wells and a cab that almost looked like any other pickup truck you might see at the local car dealer. Not bad for something that tops out at 15 miles an hour. Throughout that first day I saw new products from Semmco; Douglas; Harlan and Meggitt. Maybe not brand-spanking new in all cases, but new enough for my eyes.

I’ve been to plenty of trade shows in my career equally as enormous as inter airport Europe, but it never ceases to amaze me how much pride product managers take in describing their products. It brings it down to a size anyone can understand regardless that you’re standing in a hall tens of thousands of square feet jammed with more than 10,000 people. I introduced myself, for example, to one such manager at Unitron and spent the next hour hearing about plans to grow the European market and why the company’s product was a natural to accomplish this. Plenty more people, including the top brass, took the time to extol the virtues of their products to me.

One last impression: An American visiting a trade show held in Germany that the PR staff tells me attracted people from 34 countries knows he’s a citizen of the world. The GSE world, while international in activity, seemed a smaller and manageable globe. I met a lot of marketing people who had held their one and only job with their respective companies for decades. In other cases, I met people who switched jobs with, say one fueling equipment maker to another. At the end of my tour, I left with the feeling that my GSE crowd was a tight-knit bunch who knew the opinions and whereabouts of many other industry players.

I know I left with a stack of business cards about three inches thick and introduced myself to plenty of helpful people that will point me in the right direction for story ideas. Along the way, I learned some bad Irish jokes, received a picture of me holding up a three-foot long hot dog that I’d rather not discuss, and, finally, took back a lifelong memory of singing along to John Denver’s “Country Roads” – an inexplicably popular German bar song.

In other news, by now I trust my Ground Support Worldwide readers are “aviation pros” when it comes to navigating our new aviation portal, www.AviationPros.com. We launched the new site earlier this month. The sites leverages our expertise in the aviation industry by combining the online presence of all properties under the Cygnus Aviation umbrella – including airport business, Aircraft Maintenance Technology, and, of course, Ground Support Worldwide magazines. Years of knowledge tied together and very simple to navigate thanks to the digital realm. Explore the site and tells us what you think.