With this year’s theme of “Pursue Your Passion,” NBAA’s Schedulers and Dispatchers Conference (S&D) returned to Long Beach, California, for the first time since 2009. Now in its 29th year, the annual conference continues to grow, with more than 550 exhibitors, a record, on the sold-out exhibition floor this year. It attracted more than 2,900 attendees, including more than 150 making their first visit to the conference. Several factors have led to more diversity of attendees at SDC over the years, said conference committee chair Robyn Carpenter. One is the entry of more men into schedulers and dispatchers career fields—positions that were previously occupied primarily by women. And changing communication needs between flight departments and corporations have led to a “trend where it’s not only schedulers and dispatchers at the conference, but also other department personnel, whether maintenance, crewmembers and department leaders,” she said.
Among those making their first visit to S&D was Brian Abrahamson, a corporate aircraft supervisor with Merck's flight department, who participated in the first-time attendee passport program and earned credits toward his Certified Aviation Manager (CAM) certification. "My company asked me to come and spend some time, do some networking, and see some of the new products," he said. "It's more direct information and networking for the things that schedulers and dispatchers actually need."
The show provided a slate of more than 30 education sessions ranging from planning international operations in specific regions to safety issues such as dealing with inflight medical emergencies, understanding and combatting fatigue, security in the current global environment, and vetting supplemental lift. Other sessions dealt with operational issues such as planning for operations at high-traffic events and the myriad details that must be attended to as a new aircraft joins the department fleet.
“We do find that with a lot of schedulers and dispatchers, our conference and the education that they receive is often the only education they are going to have throughout the year,” said Carpenter, who serves as manager of support and training for Professional Flight Management. “We make sure that attendees are going away with knowledge that they can use directly in their flight departments. That is our main goal for the conference. Everything else is icing on the cake.”
“I liked the quality of the educational sessions,” said Christy Hutchinson, operations business manager with XOJet, who has attended 10 of the shows over the past 25 years. “I thought they were very informative and are touching on topics that are relevant now in the industry, that people are really interested in.”
While in past years, the exhibit hall would close during lunch, while all attendees trooped into a nearby ballroom to eat, for the first time, the show floor remained open during lunch to allow visitors more time to interact with exhibitors without conflicting with the educational sessions. “Schedulers and Dispatchers is by far the best event for this group,” noted Chris Little, chief marketing officer for California-based aviation services provider Desert Jet, who was attending her 11th conference. “It gives us the opportunity to really talk to the people that we work with, get to share news about what’s going on, and we’re able to go forward and bring some new clients into the mix, so it’s a great opportunity for us to promote our businesses to one another.”
A hallmark of the show has been its giving component, which aims to leave a lasting effect on the host city. Now in its eighth year, S&D's “Pay It Forward” clothing drive collected gently worn business attire from attendees. The thousands of garments were distributed to charities such as Dress for Success, Pacific Gateway, and Clothes the Deal, which will provide them to disadvantaged job seekers in the local community. Some companies have taken to conducting company-wide clothing drives ahead of the show, delivering hundreds of pounds of garments, while others donated large amounts of new clothing purchased just for the occasion.
“Fit for Duty,” a show-sponsored walk/run also earned donations for the charities. For the first time this year, the S&D advisory committee worked with the local school district on a presentation describing what business aviation is and the employment opportunities that might be found in it. The following day, a group of high school students was escorted to a mini-career day at the nearby Signature Flight Support FBO. “Business aviation has so many careers…that are available to kids who might not know that business aviation even exists,” said Amber Finchum, a former S&D chair and current head of the S&D advisory council’s Pay it Forward education initiative. “Some of these kids have never seen an airplane or been to an airport.” The next time the show is in town, she hopes to see results from the seeds that were planted, this year. “If we can touch one student, it’s a huge success,” she said.
NBAA’s Joanne Damato, who stepped down this year as the organization’s liaison to the S&D committee, a role she had held since 2004, has been a firsthand observer of the show’s growth. She recalled how during that span, the show has gone from being self-contained in a single hotel, to occupying an entire convention center and becoming a major event in the host cities. “The biggest thing I think we’ve done in the past 14 years is elevated the role of the scheduler and dispatcher,” she told AIN, to one that is essential, that is not seen as a purely an administrative role, but a critical member of the flight department. The non-flying professional can be an asset on the team, of equal importance to any other member of the team,” she noted.
As a result of that growth, this was the last year of a single S&D committee chair overseeing the year-long planning process between shows. In the past, there would be a single chairperson and a vice chair who would succeed them the following year. At the end of this year’s show, Kindra Mahler of Fargo Jet Center and Derek Fitzgerald of Boston Scientific took the reins as co-S&D committee chairs for next year’s show, its 30th anniversary edition, which will return to San Antonio, Texas, from January 29 to February 1.
