This may help:
www.australis.biz/nascomment
We thank Dick Smith for his personal phone call and for taking the time to add to our debate. Dick must be a very busy man and it is interesting that he sees it necessary to call and spell out his opinions to me, a relative unknown. Thanks for making those on my web site feel heard and important!
Before we all forsake flying and take up the safe pass-time of boating as interestingly suggested further below in a separate post, I would like to add my comments to Dicks.
Dick writes:
We have always had affordable safety and always will. In the 1970s the system was better, but it was 50% funded - over $200 million per year - by general taxpayers. The Labor Government at the time decided that this was to stop and that aviation should pay its own way.
I say:
It is my humble opinion that anyone who travels by air or who lives under an aircraft in flight has a vested interest in aviation safety. That is every member of our society today. Vested interest? Commensurate input.
Whether we support this or not, it is a fact of life and the Coalition, the Democrats and virtually every other politician supports this - i.e. it is unlikely to change, and we who fly will be lumbered with the costs from now on. That's the reason I work so hard in reducing costs.
Whilst this may be true, there is no reason that we should accept this! It seems that there is strong feeling that this should not be true, even from the relatively small number of entries at this site. We have a vote. Perhaps we should let the politicians know how we intend to use that vote.
How often have we been told that complacency is the biggest killer in aviation? Accepting that we must pay 100% from now on is complacency. Are the people who dwell under and use aviation happy for us to be complacent about the safety of aviation in order to save a dollar? Are they themselves blameless of complacency?
It is interesting to note that since the 1970s, we have had the major AMATS airspace changes of 1991. At the time, there were dire predictions of doom and gloom in aviation safety - just as there are now - however despite the removal of the full position Flight Service Class G service for VFR aircraft, safety has actually improved. The latest Flight Safety Australia states that the Australian aviation accident rate has "dropped significantly" in the last 10 years.
This ATSB article actually goes on to say “better awareness resulting from educational programmes was largely responsible for the improvements”. Nowhere does the ATSB attribute these improvements to any airspace reforms already in place. (Read for yourself, Page 11, FSA Vol 7 No 5 Nov-Dec 2003).
It can only be concluded as irresponsible then, that we are receiving, even today, just 8 days out from implementation, information packages on the N.A.S. latest and greatest.
The ATSB has stated that educational programmes contribute positively to aviation safety. The lack of education, as we see in the rushed implementation of the 27th November changes can only degrade safety.
Why is this implementation so rushed? Why is it being granted public scrutiny so (almost too) late?
It must be mentioned that since then, by removing the Flight Service full position system - which I agree was really good - that over $1.2 billion has not had to be paid out by the aviation industry. Can you imagine what the situation would be like if that change was not made? It would not only be Ansett that went broke, but many other operators as well. In effect, there would be many hundreds of pilots without jobs and many dozens of additional businesses in bankruptcy.
It was really good wasn’t it? So, our airspace as it stands is not as good… And we prepare to take it a step further. Backwards!
And Ansett went down anyway! Ansett was subject to all the fees and charges that all other carriers are (still) subject to – it was and is an even playing field. You cannot cite Ansett’s demise as an example for the affordable safety argument as no other carrier has (yet) gone down as a result of those financial pressures. I am saddened to say that, nothing other than poor management sent Ansett under.
If the Government had continued to fund aviation safety there would be less funding burden on the Industry than there is now. My flying over the years has certainly become more expensive through ‘user pays’. That expense is surely and evidently killing off the industry. Not a spectacular and visible fall but a slow and exhausted sigh.
I agree that there is a lot of criticism of this new airspace system. As stated before this is similar to the criticism I received at the time of the AMATS changes, which strangely enough is now the airspace everyone wants to keep (and has played its part in the safety improvements over the last 10 years.)
AMATS is only the airspace we want to keep because, as we are told, it is the best we are likely to be left with. The only options offered involve (further) degraded safety.
The ATSB article drawn from does not state that there is any evidence that AMATS contributed to improved aviation safety.
It should be noted that the reason for the removal of the requirement for VFR to monitor an ATC frequency enroute is so that the VFR pilot will concentrate on radio in the approach and departure space of an aerodrome.
If you look at the ATSB reports you will see that we get an extraordinary number of incidents in MBZs and CTAFs. One of the reasons could be that VFR pilots must monitor traffic when enroute and virtually all of this traffic is not relevant in relation to collision risk. One pilot I spoke to recently said that in 5 years of consistently flying VFR between Melbourne and Brisbane, and monitoring the enroute ATC area frequencies, he has never been in a position where he has had to answer an IFR aircraft for traffic reasons. All of his communication has been when in the MBZ or CTAF.
There are an extraordinary number of incidents in MBZ and CTAF. This is the point! Degradation of control services around aerodromes leads to a degradation of safety.
Oh to fly a GA aeroplane where one has the luxury of enough radios to distract one! If I am in an MBZ or CTAF I must monitor this terminal frequency. I am not going to be distracted by enroute frequencies because even if I were silly enough to want to monitor extraneous traffic on approach to land – I usually only have ONE radio. And in the real, slightly under funded world, this is usually the case!
If there are an extraordinary number of incidents in MBZ’s (as well as CTAF’s), why is the next phase of N.A.S. endeavouring to remove them? At least in an MBZ we can be expectant of ALERTED see and avoid, which evidence submitted here suggests is already an unsafe form of separation assurance.
One also must ask, where is the saving to industry afforded by the scrapping of MBZ’s? Air Services does not monitor MBZ or CTAF. If it doesn’t save money, why scrap them? Even the amendment to AIP when scrapping MBZ’s will cost money - not save it!
This is the classic "cry wolf" principle. Pilots are forced to listen to communication from high level airline traffic, which adds to stress and takes away from the concentration of traffic in the approach and departure airspace of an aerodrome.
A pilot can fly right across the USA in Class E airspace at 4,500' or 5,500' AGL. Much of the way, the pilot is below radar coverage but in Class E airspace. The pilot flies in almost complete silence, normally monitoring the local flight service outlet or the FAA recommended frequency of 121.5. If this system can work in the USA (with 20 times the density of traffic in the same land area) and results in a slightly higher level of safety than we get in Australia, surely it can work here.
I think the answer to this is – we don’t know if it can work here, the parameters are still too different to directly compare. It looks like we will all get to test it and find out first hand if further degradation of services around aerodromes which causes such problems now, will improve safety.
And I am not just talking about CTAF’s and MBZ’s but Class E over Class D airspace degradation of service and other N.A.S. design instances as well.
As you said in our telephone conversation, there is an improvement to safety, in the new N.A.S., manifested in the addition of vast numbers of cubic miles of Class E (more services) airspace in what was otherwise Class G airspace.
That improvement to safety is not refuted, but that airspace was Class G, and prior to alphabet airspace was OCTA, precisely because the traffic density was so low as not to represent a hazard in the first place.
It begs the question then – are we getting more Class E airspace as an expensive mitigator to placate the ill-informed?
Dick Smith
Gerard Street