December 22, 2007 – THE World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) has announced a complicated scheme designed to shore up revenues when it co-locates its 2008 conference and exhibition with the latest regional addition to the growing stable of Aircraft Interiors events.

The association plans to hold its flagship annual event alongside Reed Exhibitions’ Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas (AIX) in Long Beach, California, next September. Each organiser is offering a trade exhibition – the one focused on IFE and communications plus content, the other on the whole gamut of cabin systems – while WAEA aims to add unique value with an enhanced programme of presentations and networking events.

The arrangement recognises Reed’s success in attracting exhibitors of interest to the WAEA’s North American membership, who have made it clear they don’t want the extra cost of attending two comparable but geographically separate events. The result is a reciprocal arrangement that, broadly speaking, will give airlines and exhibitors attending one show free access to the other, while the Aircraft Interiors attendance will have to pay if they want to go to the WAEA’s educational sessions and networking events.

WAEA member airlines will enjoy free access to the association’s exhibition and all networking events and sessions. Exhibitors will access the hall free of charge – a curious sort of concession, it must be said – but will have to pay $300 a head for the sessions and networking.

AIX exhibitors will have free access to the WAEA hall but will have to find $450 each for a non-WAEA member full-access pass if they want the value-adds.

Outside these categories, entrance to the WAEA hall will be confined to WAEA members, who will pay a non-exhibiting vendor fee, and presumably to invited press.

“Our Aircraft Interiors task force has worked hard to find a financial model that will benefit our members and the association,” says the WAEA president, Doug Backelin of American Airlines. “They have made the conference affordable for all while ensuring that the association will maintain an adequate revenue flow for its other important efforts.”

But the heart-searching over the WAEA’s true role – trade show organiser or industry focus and facilitator – is still far from over. The association’s future relationship with Reed and Aircraft Interiors was top of the agenda at its board meeting earlier this month. The occasion also featured a pitch from Reed on holding WAEA 2009 in conjunction with Aircraft Interiors Asia Expo in Hong Kong.

The board decided to consider the possibility while retaining the option of a standalone effort in Southern California. A decision could come as early as its meeting, scheduled for late February or early March, but is more likely to follow analysis of the results of next September’s collaboration. In the meantime, WAEA is hard at work accentuating the positives that set it apart from the full-time trade-show operators, telling members that they can look forward to new networking events and what it calls “value-added programmes” as well as the perennially valuable educational sessions.

Without doubt, WAEA will have to play at the very top of its game if it is to retain a foothold in the exhibition game, if indeed that’s what it wants to do in the long term. There is now no shortage of show organisers willing and able to host the core IFE and communications vendors as part of an overall cabin systems offering, with Reed and Aircraft Interiors at the forefront but also including Fairs and Exhibitions’ cheekily branded Aircraft Interiors Middle East (AIME), which launches next year in Dubai.

However the tango between WAEA and Aircraft Interiors plays out, the industry at large can congratulate itself that their manoeuvrings reflect a market in full spate. And if any further evidence were needed, next year will see the birth of two new conferences – the inventively named Inflight Entertainment and Communication, set for Hamburg on January 29-30 (Inflight Online, October 18), and the just-announced China In-Flight Entertainment and Communication (IFEC) Summit, to take place in Beijing on June 26-27.