It's Airshow Week At Aero-TV! The third in a five part series, this week, starts off a series of interwoven interviews in which we asked about a dozen airshow professionals the same three questions... each of which will become the topic of its own program over the next three days. In this installment we asked a number of airshow luminaries the following question... after the airshow business was rocked by the loss of a favored team's sponsorship (the Red Barons), do airshows provide the kind of value necessary to keep attracting high level sponsorship??? In the next two parts, we'll address the airshow industry's ability to keep up with the times and the overall safety situation we find ourselves in as 2008 gets underway in earnest. Produced at the ICAS Convention just before the end of the year, we were pleased to be able to tackle such important subjects as the industry made ready to start another year... but we apologize for some of the lighting, as we were stuck with some bad conditions and had to make the best of it. ICAS tells us that Airshows draw large numbers of demographically attractive spectators - a well-educated, affluent group of men, women and children of all ages. More than 70 percent of the audience at an air show has had some college education. Three quarters report household income of $35,000 or more. The average spectator is just under 39 years of age, but more than 53 percent of spectators are between 30 and 50. Safety has always been a major airshow concern but a series of unrelated accidents, this past year, to too many performers brought the topic to the forefront of discussion at the most recent ICAS get-together. ICAS notes that Airshows offer a consistently and historically safe environment for millions of spectators each year. Since current rules were implemented nearly 50 years ago, there has not been a single spectator fatality at a North American show – an enviable safety record for any business. But... they're not satisfied to leave it that. A 'small ...
