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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, who was part of a local delegation to his first Paris Air Show last week, has been asked why a group from this community travels so far for an industry trade show.

“The answer,” said Battle, “is jobs.”

The purpose of the trip is to meet with the leaders of aviation, aerospace and defense companies about the opportunities for launching or expanding operations here.

“This is one place you can go and see top executives from those firms, and you can see them all in two or three days,” said Battle. If an industry-recruiting trip like this can help broaden the industrial base, “it just makes a lot of sense for us as a community to be there.”

Battle was impressed by the large number of companies represented at the air show. “There are a lot more companies out there we can attract to Huntsville,” he said.

The world’s largest industry air show, set at Le Bourget exhibition center, attracted 2,000 international exhibitors, 138,000 trade visitors and 205 official delegations from 88 countries.

About 25 business and community leaders made up the Huntsville/Madison County delegation. The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce and the Huntsville International Airport organized the itinerary and scheduled meetings with the CEO, president or other top-level executive of more than 30 different businesses. Gov. Robert Bentley, who attended the show for the first time, was part of some of those meetings.

Others taking part in the event included Madison County Commission Chairman Mike Gillespie; Rick Tucker, the airport’s executive director; former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, now an eminent scholar and professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; John Horack, UAH vice president for research; Rick Davis, director of Cummings Research Park; Charlie Kettle, the chamber’s 2011 chair; Ethan Hadley, the chamber’s vice president of economic development; and Mike Ward, the chamber’s vice president of governmental affairs.

There were also representatives from the Tennessee Valley Authority and the North Alabama Industrial Development Association.

Brooks Kracke, the director of Jetplex Industrial Park near Huntsville International Airport, said the air show meetings provide another chance to build relationships with company executives and remind them: “If you have any opportunities for growth, we want you to do it in Huntsville.”

“They know they need to be in Huntsville in some form or fashion because their customer is here” at Redstone Arsenal, Kracke said.

The trip, with meetings scheduled over a three-day period, was “probably one of the most productive we’ve ever had,” said Kracke, who has been to the air show seven or eight times. “We’re not bringing a signed deal back on the plane with us,” he said, “but there were a lot of opportunities out there.”

One of the most interesting exhibits at the Paris event for Battle was the Chinese space agency’s booth. It showcased four models of China’s rockets, with displays outlining its manned space program and YH-1 Mars Probe project.

China’s Tiangong 1 space lab, according to the exhibit, is scheduled to be launched this year, with Shenzhou 8, 9 and 10 spaceships to be launched to conduct unmanned and manned rendezvous and docking tests with it, establishing a manned space-Earth transportation system. The main task of the third step of the program is to build a large, long-term manned space station.

A bonus for marketing and recruiting efforts this year was an article in Flight Daily News - featuring a Q&A with Battle – that was released at the beginning of the air show.

The Huntsville area also got a lot of attention from Alabama’s booth at the air show, Battle said. “A couple of people came by each hour, asking about Huntsville and what they could do there.”

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