San Diego Group Pushes Ambitious Plan for International Air Show at Border Field
The only thing that Paris’ cosmopolitan Le Bourget Airport has in common with San Diego’s Brown Field are runways.
Brown Field, an under-utilized former Navy airfield with no regularly scheduled flights, is just a stone’s throw from the Mexican border and is used by Border Patrol agents in their attempt to stem the illegal flood of aliens that nightly passes by, and sometimes through, the field.
What Brown Field has--and Le Bourget Airport, home of the influential Paris Air Show, sorely lacks--is hundreds of acres of wide-open space.
San Diego-based Air/Space America is hoping to grab enough American aerospace and electronics manufacturers to fill the sun-baked airfield and the skies above with an industry first: a U.S.-based, Paris-style international air and space show in May of 1988.
Industry Skepticism
Despite widespread industry skepticism, Air/Space America, founded last year by former Rep. Bob Wilson, who represented the San Diego area in Congress for 28 years, hopes to draw hundreds of thousands of weekend spectators to a pair of spectacular air shows that will feature precision flying teams and an air armada that includes myriad U.S-built commercial and military airplanes.
Sandwiched between those spectaculars would be a Paris-style air show that Air/Space America believes would attract hundreds of air, space and electronics exhibitors and as many as 30,000 potential buyers.
The group’s goal has many industry experts shaking their heads. They point to aerospace industry belt-tightening, past failures in attempts to stage a U.S. air show and a proliferation of air shows elsewhere in the world.
“The chances of a successful show being put together in San Diego are about as good as me becoming Pope--and I’m not Catholic,” predicted H.G. Hollander, president of American Aerospace Industries, a New York-based marketing company that packages exhibits for companies at various international air shows.
“My guess is that it would be a very difficult thing for them to engineer a lot of enthusiasm in the aerospace industry, given the fact that there’s at least one major international show each year,” said another doubting Thomas, a spokesman for Martin Marietta Corp. “I think that the industry in general . . . (is) not really favorable to adding another one.”
President Resigns
Air/Space America also has had internal problems. Last week, the organization’s president, Roger Tierney, resigned, citing “basic philosophical differences” on show management and funding.
Wilson nonetheless says he remains “encouraged” by Air/Space America’s progress. He suggested that Air/Space America, which has been “operating on up-front seed money,” is now “moving into the big leagues” in an attempt to attract the $25 million in sponsorships and affiliations he says is needed to produce the show.
Past attempts at establishing a U.S. show have failed, largely because manufacturers say they are already besieged by too many trade and air shows. In the Unites States alone, military contractors can display their wares at trade shows held by the Navy League, the Air Force Assn. and the Assn. of the U.S. Army.
New shows must compete with the Paris Air Show staged during odd-numbered years and the Farnborough, England, air show held during even-numbered years. Last year, the Paris show, recognized as the world’s most influential, drew 1,000 exhibitors and 110,000 potential buyers, including 32,000 foreign buyers.
New shows in Singapore and Peking have drawn industry support, but exhibitors remain cautious because simply hosting a small booth at an international show can cost as much as $5,000. Transporting an airplane and staging a major marketing campaign can cost millions of dollars, according to industry spokesmen.
“The biggest . . . expense of all is the entertainment,” complained the vice president of new business development at one West Coast military electronics company. “The travel costs soar because (shows) are great places to party.”
Defense contractors are scrutinizing those costs in light of newly adopted federal acquisition regulations that prohibit contractors from passing along most air show costs to the armed forces.
“After each Farnborough and Paris show, there’s a period of time in which the worldwide industry wrings its collective hands and wonders why there has to be one show a year, every year,” said one major defense contractor executive who recently attended the Farnborough show. “Right now I’m too tired from Farnborough to even talk about another show.”
Still, if Air/Space America can “deliver the buyers, then the sellers will go to the show,” said Walt Rossbach, a Washington marketing and advertising executive who has performed feasibility studies for both McGraw Hill (the owner of Aviation Week) and Air/Space America. “However, the biggest (aerospace) buyer is our own country, and it’s already well-served” by existing shows.
Air/Space America officials decline to say which exhibitors are likely to attend, but Wilson said he has verbal commitments from “two top echelon Aerospace Industries Assn. companies.”
Several major companies with operations in San Diego seem interested in participating, among them Teledyne Ryan’s aeronautics and electronics divisions and Aerojet General.
Recently, Wilson suggested that Air/Space America could attract about 30,000 buyers during a six-day trade show in May, 1988.
In keeping with the Paris Air Show model, Wilson is building Air/Space America around a proposed six-day trade show for U.S. aerospace and electronics manufacturers, featuring a gaily decorated tent city, housing corporate chalets and an indoor display area.
“It comes back to whether or not they can attract the buyers,” Rossbach said. “And if they can attract the buyers, the sellers will be there.”
In November, Air/Space America will petition the U.S. Commerce Department to designate the show as one of 15 trade shows to benefit from the department’s “foreign buyer program.”
To gain department backing, Air/Space America must “demonstrate that (buyers and sellers) will go for a first-time show . . . because first-time shows are a very risky business,” said David Earle, director of events promotion in the department’s U.S. and Foreign Commercial Services Division.
The U.S. government does not provide financial backing but it does give “a seal of approval . . . a philosophical endorsement that this (fair) is a good one,” Earle said.
As important is the access to 65 Commerce Department offices around the world that would help “drum up interest” by matching potential foreign buyers with domestic manufacturers.
Air/Space America also has begun the search for potential sponsors and affiliates that Wilson is counting on to help finance the show.
San Diego’s key ingredient is Brown Field, the former Navy field that enjoys perfect flying weather in May. Because Brown has no regularly scheduled flights, it could easily absorb the 10-day show, according to Wilson.
Brown has easy access to thousands of nearby hotel rooms, and Wilson is counting on Southern California to provide the hundreds of thousands of air show attendees needed to cover part of the show’s costs.
