Ian Verchere
As the person elected by his peers at GIFAS, the French national association of aerospace companies, to run the 43rd Paris air show, Edmond Marchegay has all the cool of an aircraft carrier skipper in variable weather.
The decks may heave and roll in the swell, but the show goes on.
Take into account the fact that he also heads Intertechnique, France's foremost manufacturer of aircraft fueling systems, and one perceives in Marchegay organisational and managerial skills of a high order.
Most of the two years between shows, this affable Frenchman devotes a day a week to his Le Bourget tasks. When show-year dawns, however, the task becomes a twice-weekly one and - six weeks before lift-off - a full-time charge.
He is backed, he stresses, by an excellent team of 25 professionals who not only mind the store but promote its excellence worldwide and keep the books.
And since Paris is now the undisputed heavyweight champion of international air shows, one must defer to his role.
This year, he explains, there are 1,880 exhibitors "which is the largest number ever to attend any air show anywhere".
There are similar record-breaking statistics for the amount of footage rented and, when he logs on to the accounts file, Marchegay sees total revenues from all sources - exhibitors and gate receipts - for the present show of around FF240 million ($62 million).
Improved
Efforts to pin down exhibitor spending levels have evolved a Marchegay multiple of five times the rental income: FF1.2 billion. This, he explains, is based on an extrapolation of "various companies I know and what they're prepared to tell me."
These improved figures reflect the current buoyancy of the global aerospace sector.
In terms of national representation, 1999 is about the same as 1997 at 40 countries. The only additions have been Turkey and, for the first time, the Japanese aerospace agency. Gone are the Indonesians.
Although the former Soviet states are "less significant than 10 years ago", they have been much more adept at maximising their air show budgets, he feels. "The quality is better. The Russians are great engineers. They're coming with good aircraft and nice young people. They know how to attend the show, what to do; they try to find clients and they are educating themselves about marketing and selling."
For the top 25 countries, however, there is no change in the composition and character of the delegations, he says. Smaller nations show only minor changes. While declining to name them, he says some smaller countries which did not attend in 1997 are back this year. Others only attend every other show.
The USA is the biggest exhibitor followed by France and, on its heels, the UK and Germany. Based on booth and chalet space, Marchegay says revenues come about equally from airframe, engine and equipment manufacturers.
Source: Flight Daily News
