WAEA/AIX - A Really Great Show!

All comments aside, last week featured one of the best WAEA Conferences in recent memory. We don't know if it was the promotion, the Long Beach Conference hall, the fact that the AIX was co-located, the airline economic climate (?), the new technology, the weather, or whatever. Nice work to all those who participated and helped.

Now the Best In Show - Congratulations Lumexis. We know you think we are on their payroll, but they aren't even IFExpress advertisers! They were chosen over some tough competition - Thales, IMS, Sicma, Panasonic...we looked at them all and while they each had outstanding booths and presentation we choose Lumexis for a) An original booth design, b) An incredible, paradigm shifting technology, c) Popularity to airlines and show-goers alike. Congratulations.

We talked to Tech Guru, Rich Salter and he noted that they were also pleased for a couple reasons. Said Rich, "All of our time slots were taken by airlines, that has never happened to me. We had to fit in airlines who were not on our dance card - they all needed 30 to 40 minutes of presentation time - we loved it. I should also mention that out of the airlines who talked to us, we found ample good candidates for our next installs and trials." IFExpress would be remiss if we did not mention the great booth design supervised by IFE long-timer Jim Snyder who gets an attaboy for cramming 139 video monitors in their clever and functional design. IFExpress visited or walked by the booth at least a dozen times and it was always packed!

Here are some RAVES from the show some of which will show up in future stories - Great presentation from Panasonic and God bless the person who thought of those massage chairs...Thales had the hottest technology room...a ground-based connectivity system featuring incredible data rates and one scanning beam antenna for each aircraft... the worlds lightest (and cheapest) thin seat from Zim... a forthcoming onboard Blackberry connectivity system that we cannot discuss here...a prototype portable IFE unit with a keyboard from digEcor... an iPod-based cabin terminal system from Plane Bill... a working gatelink system with real potential from Thales... and an onboard Bluetooth connectivity system (We cant talk about this one yet either). We would be remiss in our RAVES if we didn't mention our fun interview with Benoit Debains, new CEO of OnAir. You need to meet this fellow, we liked him and we think you will too, however, it was a bit like interviewing Robin Williams - be prepared!