For what can be a long list of new product introductions, AEA has a great strategy: Give every company five minutes on the stage to make the elevator pitch, then on to the next one. Still, with 33 new products on Wednesday’s opening day, it was two-hour slog to sit through it all.
I amused myself by sending a text to colleague Larry Anglisano revealing that Wal-Mart had just announced a line of ADS-B products. But the joke was on me. A bit later, I was chatting with Brad Hayden, late of Aspen Avionics but now running his own drone repair company. He asked what I thought about Google’s ADS-B plans. You mean the sense-and-avoid research they’ve hinted at? Nope, he said, they’re getting into ADS-B hardware. As we report today, FlightGlobal had this story two weeks ago and for the life of me, I don’t know how the rest of us missed it. Probably because we don’t cover ICAO meetings, an odd venue where Google chose to reveal its plans. Very few outlets picked this up.