R Areas - Shoalwater Bay

[sunnySA]

Originally Posted by Lead Balloon

The latest episode in The Keystone Cops Do Airspace series is the comedy gold contained in AIC H33/23. The latest hump on the airspace camel is now going to be called Military Operating Areas and the ‘interim’ arrangements extend to 28 November 2024. (I’ll bet folding money that the web of band-aides will extend beyond then, because Keystone Cops have a habit of doing Keystone Cop things.)

The aim of all this continues to be for Australia to promulgate airspace which foreign aircraft will continue to be free to use, at will, but Australian aircraft will not. After all, it always was and remains international airspace in which Australia has no jurisdiction over foreign aircraft minding their own business.

This kind of surreally silly nonsense is what’s said when attempting to justify a delusionf course that’s the case. CASA wouldn’t know and couldn’t find out what the usage patterns were or are in most if not all of these areas and, in any case, they’ll change as and when foreign aircraft over whom Australia has no jurisdiction choose to. It’s…. international airspace.

Let’s use just one example. R574, off Willytown: The chart says R574 is from the surface to FL600 and extends beyond the outer boundary of the territorial sea of mainland Australia by about 80 nautical miles. Does anyone believe that CASA or Airservices or the Australian Defence Organisation would know that, for example, there’s an aircraft tootling along at 1,500’ 95 nautical miles off the coast of NSW if that aircraft did not make itself and its position known?

But more fundamentally, what’s going to happen when I take off out of YSBK and with my US licence in my N-registered aircraft, tootle up the lane to Palm Beach, head out off the coast then tootle up through R574 13nms off the baseline in international airspace – actually for a while I’ll be in R578B centred on Willytown but still in international airspace – unannounced. Under the airspace camel that's been created, that’s OK. But if I jump into a VH-registered aircraft instead and fly the same route, it’s not OK.

It all makes perfect sense … to someone.

LB, very disappointed in your post, where is all the bolding and/or underlining? It is strongly recommended that all future posts include either bolding and/or underlining because one must emphasis that the Chicago Convention does not permit any member State to enforce flight restrictions on foreign registered aircraft in international airspace.