I had to write this almost a full week after going to the NBAA convention in Atlanta. I was just that intense. I have never been at an NBAA thing before so I really didn’t’ know what to expect. Between the convention hall and the static display out at Charlie Brown Field in Northwest Atlanta I’ve now seen every established business aviation company and gotten free gifts from most of them.

            I’m not accustomed to wearing a sport coat and tie at an aviation event – I am more of a tattered shorts and baggy t-shirt kind of guy. I conformed totally to the rules that the NBAA laid-down for attendance. I wore business attire, didn’t bring any children, and, of course, left my dog at home. Just think of the NBAA convention as a sort of “anti-Sun&Fun” and I think you’ll have a clear picture of what it is.

            A suit jacket and tie are great things to wear if you are trying to hide the paunch brought on by too many tacos and milk shakes. At Sun & Fun and Oshkosh where it is very hot you can hide your gut quite effectively by wearing a loose t-shirt and leaving it un-tucked. Nobody can see that you are overweight if you have the smooth lines of an exposed shirt tail to hide your girth.

            The products and companies promoted and displayed at the NBAA went from the very established, very old stuff that hardly anybody buys anymore (Beech King Airs) to the very expensive, imaginary products that people clamor over but can’t have just yet (PiperJet, that weird blimp design, the corporate SST, etc). All of these products, while not actually existing, still brought out the people with the checkbooks frantically writing deposits before somebody else could beat them and get a position on an imaginary airplane.

            I saw the same sort of feeding frenzy at this year’s Oshkosh. The Cessna people sold well over seven hundred copies of an aircraft they have not produced yet and won’t produce for a few more years. Somewhere between seven and eight hundred people ran up to their tent and wrote $10,000 checks for an airplane that doesn’t exit yet and when it does will perform weaker than a used Cessna 150.

            This is probably a case of me being left behind by history. I didn’t buy Apple stock when it was first offered, I never saw the VLJ craze coming and I never imagined that people would get so excited about a class of aircraft that performs worse than existing aircraft from four decades ago.

            At the NBAA you are offered coffee at least every ten yards by an attractive girl in a tight top. Remember, “eye contact”. She is a little above where you are focusing your eyes and would appreciate it if you stopped talking to her chest. There are no microphones to be found there.

            My theory is that everybody who attends the NBAA for the purpose of spending twenty million or so on their next corporate jet decide which one they will buy based on the quality of the coffee offered and the mammary glands displayed. It is as good a theory as any and is one that the companies seem to believe in firmly.

            I went as a member of the overpaid, liberal elite media. This means I got in free. I also got a free lunch every day and let me tell you the free lunches at the NBAA beat those stale crackers offered at the press center at Sun & Fun by a million miles.

            We had real food served by real waiters at the press room every day at noon. Lunch wasn’t served by big topped girls and the coffee was of a lower quality found on the convention floor but I have filled out my suggestion sheet for next year’s NBAA in Orlando and hope to have that corrected.