February 6, 2008 – THE World Airline Entertainment Association has decided against a quick repeat of its “Sleeping with the enemy” experiment, announcing that next year’s WAEA conference and exhibition will not be co-located with any of the regional Aircraft Interiors events.

This year’s WAEA is set for September in Long Beach, California, on the same site as Reed Exhibitions’ Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas. The two shows will be right next to one another, and a complex mutual admissions policy has been developed. But it looks as if that could be the last time for a while that the two organisers cosy up together, with the WAEA board settling firmly for a stand-alone event in Palm Springs, California, in October 2009.  

“We considered several scenarios for the 2009 conference, one of which was to co-locate with Reed Exhibitions’ Aircraft Interiors/Asian Aerospace show in Hong Kong,” says WAEA president Doug Backelin. “Palm Springs emerged as the best option for our membership.”

WAEA justifies the switch back to a solo event in 2009 by the need to evaluate its membership’s reaction to this year’s co-location. “We have increased the value for WAEA exhibitors and members and we need to assess the response to effectively plan for the future,” Backelin says.

The organisation has also decided to hold its spring 2009 WAEA Week – combining the traditional TV Market with educational workshops and a conference – at a yet to be specified location in Asia. This year’s WAEA Week is set for Dubai on April 21-24. “We want to develop additional opportunities that are representative of the international nature of our organisation,” comments Backelin.

The WAEA’s manoeuvrings reflect an increasingly crowded market for IFE and passenger communications events. Leader of the chasing pack is the flagship Aircraft Interiors show in Hamburg, with its Asian and American offspring. Then come the upstart and cheekily labelled Aircraft Interiors Middle East – no relation to the Reed shows – plus this summer’s China In-Flight Entertainment and Communications Summit in Beijing. Rounding out the field is the just concluded and inventively named Inflight Entertainment and Communication conference from the German arm of IIR, the British-headquartered global business events specialist.