I also love the way that you are berated by the ‘airservices operators’ when you don’t have a card with you and desperately need some wx, information.
The unpredictable nature of flying charter requires a service that can be accessed at any time. Many times have I been stuck somewhere longer than planned, needed an update on the wx, last light etc and had to ring briefing since the a/c is 5kms away and your pax are nowhere to be seen. Not everyone is in a big city with unlimited internet access evrywhere you go.
Get through on the 1800 number and wait for the ‘airservices’ operator. You explain that you don’t have your card handy and require some information from briefing. They then start to question your motives and reasons, ask why you don’t have your card with you, almost like they are looking for a good reason not to put you through!
Half a dozen times now I have rung through like that without a card number. I wonder if everyone started ‘forgetting’ their cards, whether or not they could ever refuse you access to critical and essential information. I’m quite sure that the operator wouldn’t want to be responsible for an aircraft to go blundering into degenerating weather or notamed military exercises because information was denied.
The material given out explaining the new changes some time ago quoted that the briefing services then provided to pilots for free was costing 1.5 million dollars a year! Hardly massive cost cutting.
The issue here isn’t the fact that the aircraft costs so many dollars an hour to charter, so what's an extra buck fifty. The bottom line is that the more accessible a service that is so crucial, such as this one is, the more it is going to be used. This affects everyone. We all fly in the same sky. As has been said time and time again, those that are at the ‘bottom’ end of the aviation scale are slowly being eroded at and pushed ever more out of the picture.
In a country such as this, aviation, and especially general aviation plays a role that can’t be duplicated in any other form. Miners, pastoralists, tourists, governments, police, search and rescue and a multitude of other agencies rely on aviation.
With the continuing emphasis on ‘affordable safety’, those with these single minded and totally unpractical, archaic and dangerous policies will have blood on their hands in the future.