Originally Posted by
Vag277
LB
The distaste that you and others for CASA and the apparent allocation to them of all blame for a reduction in GA activity seems it overlook many other factors that could be behind the reduction of GA activity in those small regional towns. Some of those factors include extensive, long duration drought conditions, the demise of bank running with practically all financial transaction being electronic rather than by cheque, substantially better roads and motor vehicles making road transport more effective, the aging aircraft fleet and attendant increase in maintenance costs (a characteristic of any machine).The economic growth is national and not necessarily uniformly distributed.
If causes of reduction in GA activity are to be accurately identified, the basis of previous activity needs to be identified and relationships between them assessed.
As I write this there are 3 aircraft currently in the circuit and flying schools at the aerodrome are having 100 hour inspections done at 5-6 week intervals.
You misrepresent me, Vag.
I have never attributed to CASA “all” blame for the decline in GA activity. Indeed, to the extent that the decline is caused by the regulatory dog’s breakfast that continues to increase in complexity, I don’t blame CASA. It’s hardly surprising that people are happy to continue to rake in six figure salaries to create more and more complexity and ‘enforce’ it, indefinitely. Rather, I blame the stultifying mediocrities that have presumed the description “government” over the past couple of decades, who have abdicated responsibility and allowed CASA to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create an ever-growing regulatory mess, with
no end in sight. (The lies told by successive CASA talking heads about the regulatory reform program are matters for which I do hold CASA responsible.)
I have also attributed a substantial part of the blame to the abandonment by the Commonwealth of aerodrome infrastructure.
Those two factors are not the only factors, but they are the primary factors in my opinion, based upon my first-hand experience and observation over a few decades.
Of course there’s ‘some’ aviation activity and businesses operating at the aerodrome to which you refer: A decline in activity does not mean
no activity.
I learned to fly at a capital city airport. There were 6 flying schools and 3 GA maintenance organisations back then. They’re all gone. There is now only one flying school that has established a ‘satellite’ presence there, in the GA ‘terminal’ building (portable site shed). The only person to benefit from the ‘privatisation’ of that airport is the person who is slowly climbing the Rich List on the back of a monopoly that was a Commonwealth asset. All of the people who owned that asset as “common wealth” are now paying to use it, so that one person can climb the Rich List. F*ckn brilliant.