More ATM companies exhibit at each Inter Airport exhibition over the years. Is it an interesting exhibition to attend as an Air Traffic Management expert? Our own Katarzyna Zmudzinska went there and here is her report...
Last week I was a visitor at the Inter Airport Europe event in Munich. That was the first time for me, and I was curious if this actually is a relevant event to visit for me, or for any other Air Traffic Management-related professional. The trade fair that I would regularly attend is Airspace World, I imagined the Inter Airport Europe event as being intended for companies from the landside of the airport business and for infrastructure suppliers.
After my arrival I realized I was not really mistaken – the clear focus of the event was on airport infrastructure of various kinds – airport lighting, surface inspection, water drainage, firefighting. I saw many passengers and baggage handling systems and products, like antimicrobial trays for security check, passenger scanners and the like.
The size of the event was similar to Airspace World, however the exhibition area was split into two exhibition halls. What was new to me, was that the entrance was not for free - one day ticket to attend the trade fare was an investment of 42€.
After the registration, I got access to the platform where I could browse through profiles of other registered visitors and exhibitors and arrange meetings with them. It was very useful to have an overview of who is visiting the event and the platform made it easier to schedule meetings with contacts of interest. Moreover, one part of the exhibition hall provided a dedicated meeting space with chairs and tables, that could be used for free after booking via the event platform.
Before entering the exhibition halls, one could find a corner with industry paper magazines to be collected for free.
Strolling around countless stands, I went for a search of any ATM companies, that would provide systems or products related to Air Navigation. In the end I managed to find a few! The first one – ANSART, exhibiting their ADS-B based Airport Traffic Monitoring System – the tool for Airport operators and ANSPs which is a sort of a simplified version of the A-SMGCS for apron management and boosting ground traffic situation awareness.
The next one – Insero Air Traffic Solutions, at the booth I was shown their ATIS/VOLMET system, AWOS, the airport lighting control panel.
I also paid a visit to the booth of Avinor, Opscom and ACR, where I learned about their Drone Request tool, which is a “pre-UTM” platform for checking the space requirements, current traffic situation and inputting the relevant information about the drone flight.
I walked by to meet with Polish fellows too – Airotec exhibited their two most iconic products: AWOS – the software for automated weather observation system and DEFI - drone-based visual aids inspection. And another Polish company – AP-TECH as I learned, providers of the first A-SMGCS solution in Poland.
My Inter Airport Europe visit was overall a good experience, I had a few good conversations and met several interesting contacts. The arguments in favor of visiting the show by an ATM person could be that there are many airports decision making people visiting the show, and therefore it is a good opportunity to make oneself visible and create possibilities to connect. Besides that, there were a few ATM-related exhibitors, that seemed to be busy with talking to their booths’ visitors.
On the other hand, Inter Airport Europe was strongly focused on products and services related to airport infrastructure and terminal operations, and the visitors were mostly professionals with this kind of interest. Moreover, I didn’t see any ANSP business representatives.
Networking and connecting with people I find one of the most important factors in our industry (and many other industries as well), so as a conclusion I would say it was wort the visit, especially as it was only a short distance travel for me.
