WRT last year's event, I thought the value for the money was quite good. The LH C fare was fantastic, but (from a fare perspective) what was even better was the fact that it was open on return dates and destinations. It allowed me (and many others I'm sure) to tack on some additional days to do other things while already in Europe (and not be stuck getting back to FRA) and also allowed people who couldn't be away for as long to go back when they needed to. Some kind of flexibility like that is, in my book, key.

I think LH and SAS both did a stellar job with what they put on, but I have to say I was disappointed with Airbus. It was certainly cool to visit the factory, but it didn't seem like we really got anything from them that we couldn't have gotten otherwise, nor did it feel like they at all went out of their way for us.

For round 2, there seem to be a few major things being thrown around:

US Centric:
This isn't super exciting unless we somehow throw in one of the airplane graveyards as several have suggested.

Asia
I spend a decent of time there (such as right now), so I wouldn't want to just swing through the airports to swing through them. Getting some slick behind the scenes stuff at the big airports like HKG (I know, no star carriers are based there) or SIN (or even NRT) could be good, especially because they are my favorite airports. Someone threw out PVG as a suggestion - I'd be concerned that getting any special access there could be troublesome (plus most of us need visas to go there - not a problem but it does require some planning), but it might be interesting to see if/how they operate differently than the more Western operations. There are also some fairly large maintenance/refit operations in Korea and China that might be of interest.

South America
I've never been to South America or Africa - visiting Brazil (Embraer) or SA are both intriguing, assuming we'd be going after the World Cup was done with. These two are also quite far from everything else, so either/both would definitely complicate the schedule unless we were able to keep things entirely to the Southern Hemisphere. NZ is of course down south as well...perhaps that could work out somehow?