The Asian Business Aviation Conference & Exhibition (ABACE) will return to Shanghai in 2012, NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen announced yesterday here at the NBAA convention. The NBAA and the Asian Business Aviation Association (AsBAA) will cohost the three-day event (February 28 to March 1, 2012). It will be held at Hongqiao Airport’s new Shanghai Hawker Pacific Business Aviation Center, which offers more than 13,000 sq ft of hangar space and a static display area capable of accommodating 60 business aircraft.

The NBAA and AsBAA hosted the first ABACE event in Shanghai back in 2005, but the organizers cancelled a 2009 conference in December 2008, largely, Bolen said, because “the industry was experiencing “as difficult a month as any in the history of business aviation.”

Sounding decidedly more optimistic about prospects for 2012, Bolen said he was announcing “the right show at the right time in the right place.” Moreover, he noted that ABACE would return to Shanghai in 2013 and 2014 “and potentially beyond that as well” and that NBAA and AsBAA may also host regional forums elsewhere in Asia similar to the ones that NBAA organizes in the U.S.

“The [business aviation] market in China is exploding,” said Jason Liao, chairman and CEO of the China Business Aviation Group and the NBAA’s chief representative in Asia. “It’s very exciting right now.”