NBAA CONVENTION LAS VEGAS

National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) held their convention in Las Vegas this week. It has been 9 days from the horrible shooting incident occurred. I have been traveling to Las Vegas since 1970 and have never seen the town so subdued. There was a quiet aurora around the City and in the hotel casinos. Fewer people were in Vegas than I have ever encountered. When I checked in to my hotel my room was not ready, and they asked me if I would like a penthouse room at the same price. That has never happened to me before in Vegas. I arrived early on Tuesday the first day of the convention at Henderson Airport (HND). I needed a reservation number to be allowed to enter Class D Airspace. When I told the tower my number I could hear all ATC laughing, the number was 007. Flying weather up and back was fantastic. Pure VFR weather both ways with a 25 Kt. crosswind going home. HND airport is the host for the event. It is located about a thirty minute ride from the Strip in Las Vegas. NBAA, as always, provided buses from HND to the convention center, and then provided buses from the convention center to all the hotels on the Strip. HND is home to the static display of which their were 85 aircraft on display. In addition the night before several planes were towed down the strip from HND to the convention center for an indoor static display. My only disappointment was not being approached at the static display as the vendors were too busy talking among themselves, so i did my own tours. All the big boys of jets were there. Global 7000, Gulfstream 650, Falcon 8X and several Cessna Jets were the big hitters on display. My favorite plane was a polished aluminum DC 3. It was gorgeous. I spent most of the morning going through the static display and then bused over to the convention center. NBAA does not overlap much with piston general aviation (GA). However this year it did. The biggest issue facing GA this year is HR 2997 which is a bill supporting privatization of Air Traffic Control (ATC). I can not recollect when I have seen Mark Baker, CEO of AOPA, Jack Pelton, President of EAA and Ed Bolen, President of NBAA on the same stage. I wish that GA be referred to as smaller piston airplanes and Jets be referred to as Business Aviation. As of now they are all grouped together under the GA category. This year all three groups have this one issue in common to defeat HR 2997. Everyone involved in GA realizes how serious this is and could be very detrimental in the future of limiting airspace to GA for the Airlines and user fees. We have the best ATC system in the world. It does not need fixing, it just needs to be funded on a consistent level to update programs such as NxtGen. HR 2997 is the biggest threat to the future of GA. There are three exhibit halls are NBAA and they are big. I am usually worn out after trying to visit each booth. Of course I could not stop at every booth to chat or I would never get through all the exhibitors. I found it interesting that the crossover booths that apply to GA and Jets were very busy. ForeFlight, Bose and MYGOFLIGHT had excellent attendance. When I go to NBAA I try to catch up with old aviation friends. It was difficult having much of a conversation with Ryan McBride, Mark Baker, Tom Haines and two people I missed completely were Heidi Williams, in charge of airspace for NBAA, and Rob Mark editor of Flying Magazine. They were all very busy. This gives me a reason to go back in two years. The other aspect I truly enjoy is chatting up the people around me on the bus rides. I met people from all over the world and always find this fascinating. I do not know how the attendance was this year. It looked down to me but it is such a large venue it is truly hard to tell. I would also like to thank Scottsdale Airport (SDL) for keeping my bag in their booth until I left the show to check in at my hotel.