The Malaise is more than COVID19
As usual Lead Balloon and Dick are on the money, and its obvious enough that FB is making inroads. Another website caters particularly for the tragic scene of Australia’s General Aviation, its all part of a changing and competitive environment.
Thirty three years of a failed experiment, handing over the total regulatory function for Australia’s aviation industry to an unelected independent Commonwealth corporate, has reduced the aviator population, in large part by killing off hundreds of flying schools. If the BITRE statistics of declining activity in GA are related to our doubled population (say 50 yrs) then we see more realistically the forgone benefits, jobs, businesses and services that would have flourished if we had had a workable regulatory environment for GA.
Now the grapevine is saying that there’s a flurry of consternation within the fortress of Aviation Hearse. Maybe our new Minister Barnaby Joyce has told them to fix the mess? Time will tell.
Much of our exhortation for reform has been that CASA should follow the regulations of NZ and of the FAA. Canada too gets mentioned, and all three jurisdictions do have far better and more workable regulations.
How might this play out?
Let’s say that CASA has indeed conceded their outer perimeter, and waved the white flag to pacify that bunch of rabble in AOPA, and the rest of those unruly criminals, otherwise known as Australia’s General Aviation community.
“Yes Minister, we are looking at the changes we might be able to implement and we think we should make a study tour, NZ, USA and Canada to see if their models could work here.”
B.J., “How long will this take?”
“With COVID its hard to say, but a fortnight’s quarantine in Hawaii for our team might be arranged, then home again. After quarantine again there’ll have to be stakeholder engagement. What with Xmas, summer holidays and staff shortages we might be able to have legislation drafted say middle next year.”
(Around about election time! Yippee, we put ‘em off again and, with luck, a Labor Minister will dump the whole of this sorry ‘reform’ nonsense.)
This is how the salary factory works.
The only way that could lead to successful reform, a total capitulation, insist that:-
(1.) Glen Buckley is compensated.
(2.) Immediate reforms implemented by exemptions to allow independent instructors now. In effect what we we used to have.
(3.) Parallel licensing for RAAUS, GFA and VH pilots.
(4.) Car driver medical standards for PPLs.
(5.) Ask Home Affairs to remove the ASIC requirement in line with the Forsyth report 2014.
(6.) Chief Pilots allowed to certify each other’s annual Proficiency checks.
7, 8, 9, 10 etc., you name them.
If there’s no actual runs on the board right now there’s no change and no score, time fritters away, opportunities fade, and people die.