I simply don’t think it is all that complicated. If you know these areas are there, you plan according and communicate with the control zones and you generally have no issues at all.
Use some respect when you talk to the person at the other end of the radio, it’s amazing what liberties that can afford you.
Have some knowledge of the process and show them you have tried and you will get a lot more out of the communication.
Plan and accept that sometimes it will not happen straight away and you have to be flexible to get what you want.
Don’t fly in to **** situations.
Having been flying on the fires just west the day this aircraft went in, it was not an ideal flying environment. It was hard work, in a helicopter, flying low level. And I’m a somewhat experienced “professional” (I use that term lightly).
And the very similar incident involving the helicopter in to Williamtown. A colleague of mine was the last person to see them alive. They landed and refilled themselves at Coffs Harbour where I had been parking my machine each night. They filled their aircraft up from fuel stored in a drum and a plastic agricultural tank they had onboard the aircraft. Initial reports from the ATSB show the pilot was not even night rated. Yet took off with no possibility at all of finishing the next leg during daylight hours.
Unfortunately these two situations were both tragic. But they were both realistically avoidable and to blame the airspace for what at best seems like poor airmanship is a massively long bow to draw and simply not fair to the people in the ATC zones doing their jobs as best they can. I think education towards the industry to realise stopping and not trying to continue at all costs might be more beneficial than changing some airspace’s that are, at present, completely manageable.