THANKS BUT NO THANKS
Cloudy
Thanks for the invite but as I don't watch TV I don't contribute to their stories.
I am however reminded of the Ch XX (XX being a number larger than 9 but I better not dob anyone in) chopper in the past and its regular breaches of CTR in the rush for a story. Also, the recent media intrusion into the AUF investigation of the guy who died during the forced landing. And to top it off the media chopper fanning the Ash Wednesday fires in their determination to get a story. Now they have to create "zones of exclusion" at any major disaster to prevent the media choppers from potentially creating their own.
And the media is doing a story on air safety and the NAS? Bit tongue in cheek one would argue.
Still, perhaps they will trot out the USA statistics and we will at last be able to examine the matter factually, including comparisons of the GA accident and fatality rates.
Sorry if I'm causing offence but the media lacks any credibility. It has diverted from REPORTING news to CREATING news by inciting the nutters to commit follow on crimes to emulate the vividly written media stories that encourage anyone seeking notoriety to join in. Just to give them a final kicking, it was the media under control of two key players pushing the matter for their Canberra mates who orchestrated the GST by convincing the mug Australian that smokes, beer, and cars would be cheaper. Now where's their credibility?
Well before the unicom at the Rock and TCAS I remember our calling inbound (VFR, NOSAR) arriving in the Saratoga while two jets kindly held at the taxiway for us to land. No fear or concern from any of the three of us. Now what could the media have done with that if they knew we were sharing the same skies and ground without ATC or TCAS.
Facts of the matter are that the NAS WILL come to pass; a year down the track all this hype will be history; and the only ones who are going to lose out through any media sensationalism scaring away PAX are the RPT and the ATC - a drop in travelling PAX affects jobs in both areas. Surely Oz RPT aviation has had enough losses in the past few years without further fuelling its own demise.
Akkers
Spot on again. I have been put under the hammer at CTAF/MBZ by the odd RPT totally unconcerned with procedures and trying to save time and fuel by bulldozing VFR out of the way. Fortunately a rarity.
In terms of traffic, separation, and safety, when we were on Federation Airshows in 2001 in Qld, we had about 80 aircraft including AUF and in various performance categories sharing the skies and CTAFs and the rule of the day was - as expected - SEE and BE SEEN. Radios tend to become a tad congested and there is no guarantee all calls will be heard. Perhaps we were NAS pioneers.
Cheers
Brian H