PLANNED ROOT - fair cop. I guess we cannot rerun that era with Lib's in, so the "environmental factors" cannot be assessed against the "clowns' performance. I, as will many others, reflect back on this past year and wonder about many things that are concerning or embarassing for me as an Australian also however this is out of context for PPRUNE.
The bottom line is that we need a solution that is safe and effective. One that will increase the present viability and future potential of flying in Australia. A solution that will increase the safety of flying operations by reducing the risk to flying operations. Even an holistic solution that may depend upon part or full subsidisation to maintain system stability and responsible levels of service within a changing commercial environment.
In 30 years of flying and controlling I have seen us move from a CTA/OCTA system that was not completely perfect to a hotchpotch of confusion. Ironically ATC now do almost all of the tasks that Flight Service, Operations and SAR staff used to do and nowhere near as well. You wonder why the freq.s are congested? With increase of E this is compounded with increased airspace and increased complexity of service by that same controller. You will get delays. Our improved technology means that you cannot just call up for clearance and charge off because the "beast needs to be fed" to work properly.
So previously you called up to go A to B and knew that you had one clear boundary between one service and another - away you went. The critics will argue that my perspective is old hat and of no value. The critics will argue that this was so very expensive and they could be right. I wonder the cost of all the change. I wonder the cost savings to reduced staffing (if that happened). I wonder the secondary effect of unemployment. I wonder the effect of these changes to the current state of the industry!!!!!!
Chaps in high places - have you stopped and considered that you may have blown it? That your actions may be part-causal to the demise of the industry.
We had the safest airspace system in the 80's till someone went for a little fly in a little helo and got us to where we are now. A cleverer person would have not manically propagated change for what was not broke but kept the good factors, ditched the bad and improved and streamlined the system.
I think there is merit in reducing the ADT factor and spending a little more time on consideration.
The present lot have taken us to where we are today with NAS and pursuing this lot will have no effect. The backgrounder to this is worthy of 4 Corners but all will get out in time.
My hope is that Latham will be different (and keep his ability to call a shovel a $%^&&* shovel) and inject some honesty and forthrightness into the system.
could be wrong!
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