I wonder who Pemberton Strong is?
Dick Smith targets Jetstar at Avalon
By aviation correspondent Pemberton Strong:
So what's Dick Smith up to now? He's successfully milked the "little Aussie battler" image in so many areas in his life as aviator, publisher, food manufacturer and marketer, retailer, regulator, and the republican issue. Remember when his Australian Geographic magazine was proudly Australian, but was being printed in Asia all those years ago. He kept quiet about that till sprung and forced to fess up.
As a self promoter and spotter of trends, he's a master, like Dickie Branson from Britain who's a bit more cynical than Dick would ever be. But our Dick (Smith) is back and up to his old tricks again.
Having just been publicly humiliated with the recent announcement that his 'New Airspace System' (NAS) will largely be rolled back later this year due to safety levels not being improved, Dick is now targeting Qantas and Geoff Dixon over Jetstar's use of Avalon Airport in Melbourne.
He posted the letter to Dixon that he intends to print on a full-page advertisement in The Australian, on the well known commercial pilot's news group PPRuNe here.
Judging by the responses, it's very easy to see just how Dick is considered by fellow pilots. He's not liked, or appreciated. It's a sort of "get stuffed" to Dick from the flying fraternity.
And he hasn't stopped there with this story in the Melbourne Age: Jetstar pilots fly blind: Dick Smith
Talk about flogging a horse with everything to get himself some publicity. But wait there's more from the captain's chair.
There's the time Dick decided he was going to sue Australia's air traffic control provider, Airservices Australia, for endangering his family by not giving him clearance to over fly Sydney Airport in his single engine Cessna whilst on a flight back from Lord Howe Island to Bankstown.
The indignant Dick, who did not have a flight plan submitted for what was already an extremely risky long over water flight in a single engine aeroplane, was angry that he wasn't given clearance through Sydney airport's busy airspace which would have resulted in numerous large jets with hundreds of people aboard having to divert around him. Read on PPRuNe again here and here.
And then there was the time Dick suspected that he was being targeted by a
PR firm in a "dirty tricks campaign". Check that one out here.
Obviously Dick is suffering from Limelight Deprivation Syndrome or a similar affliction. Threatening Qantas is a bit like "We Warn the Czar". Oh dear, another irritation for Geoff Dixon (GOD) to go with the campaign against the unlevel international playing field, foreign carriers like Emirates and trying to snuggle up to the once much feared Singapore Airlines, which was one of those which had titled the playing field its way in a former life as a substantially government-owned airline. (There are obviously good government airline and bad ones. Bad ones are those that come in and try to break up a cosy duopoly).
Strange how there's an outbreak of selective amnesia at the top of Qantas these days. If it’s contagious they might not remember just who Dick Smith is. Now wouldn't that be galling for the "little Aussie bleeder"?
Crikey Media 9/8/2004
www.crikey.com.au