Aerospace Industries Association - Aia Aerospace

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) is an American trade association representing manufacturers and suppliers of civil, military, and business aircraft, helicopters, UAVs, space systems, aircraft engines, missiles, material, and related components, equipment, services, and information technology in the United States. It also co-sponsors, with the National Association of Rocketry, the Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC), an annual competition for high school students. Member companies also give awards and scholarships to top placing teams at the TARC national finals each year and it is funded through sponsoring companies. AIA also develops the manufacturing standards called National Aerospace Standards which are a vailable to aerospace manufacturers that conform to United States Military Standard's for equipment manufacturing and provide standards for other various components.

The organizations's current president and CEO is Dave Melcher.

Advocacy

In late 2011, AIA launched the Second to None federal budget education campaign to inform the general public and elected officials about the importance of the aerospace and defense industry and provide answers to what the predicted impacts of federal budget cuts, commonly known as sequestration, will have on the aerospace and defense industry. The campaign received significant media attention in 2012 for its efforts and competed as a finalist in 2012 for PRWeek Awards 2013's Public Affairs Campaign of the Year.

Lobbying Disclosures

In the third quarter of 2011, the group spent $886,814 on lobbying Congress, according to its filing with the House Clerk's office. In the same quarter of 2010, it spent $213,684.

Membership

In 2012, the organization refused an application from Airbus for its parent company EADS, which is 15-percent owned by the French government, to join. Then-CEO Marion Blakey commented at the time, "We are here to represent the interests of the United States (industry) and we do not believe it's appropriate for foreign governments to use AIA to lobby our own".