For Cessna Mustang owner Jeff Greenberg, NBAA’s 62nd Annual Meeting & Convention just wasn’t long enough. Attracted to the event held last month in Orlando by NBAA’s more than 1,000 exhibitors and the Light Business Airplane Conference sessions, Greenberg said he really wished the show lasted one more day. On the first day, Greenberg tried to visit all the exhibitors on his to-do list, then he spent the second day attending LBA sessions and the third day at the first Single-Pilot Safety Standdown (sponsored by Cessna). That left him no time to go to the static display, hence his desire for the show to go on for another day.
By many accounts, NBAA’09 was as good a show as many earlier NBAA shows, although not as well attended as last year’s blockbuster. By the end of the show, attendee numbers totaled 22,920, a 25-percent drop from last year’s three-day total of 30,811. But exhibitor numbers were stronger at 1,075, down 9 percent from last year’s 1,183, and those companies were accommodated on 84 percent of last year’s floor space.
