Re: AOPA bunfight?
Bob, every time I visit their website looking for something sensible, all I see is more aggressive and highly emotional rubbish that, rather than advancing the cause of GA, is doing the reverse.
"Tearing the heart out of GA" my @rse! Exactly what is the Minister and his civil servants expected to do with rubbish like that?
Telling the Minister he has made "A shambles' of aviation security?
AOPA's Mission: "AOPA stands for it's members' right to fly without unnecessary restrictions and costs.' This is childish rubbish! You have no such rights and never have had them!
Then of course there are the posts on the website talking contemptuously about public servants stuffing things up.
Well AOPA people, I was priviledged to work for the Kennett government for four years, tasked with getting manufacturing industry back on its feet, which we did. I had never worked for the public sector, or with public servants before. I say it was a priviledge because with one or two rare exceptions the ones I worked with were a dedicated ansd conscientous group who worked bloody hard for what they were paid and had no axe to grind. I also worked with my opposite numbers in the Commonwealth government as well.
Now let me tell you a secret. Provided you are civil and helpful, the public service will bend over backwards to help you. However there is one thing they cannot stand, and that is the type of wind - bag uninformed cheap shots of the sort AOPA fires at CASA with every press release. They hate it even more when the shots are aimed at the Minister. Why? Because they can't respond, with the very occasional exception of correcting a factual error. They have to remain civil.
So what response can a public servant make to a rude and abusive customer who complains all the time like AOPA does? I'll leave it to your imagination, except to say we had dealings with a certain firm whose CEO was always in the paper lambasting the Department. What the guy didn't know was that as a result of his behaviour, there was a directive that all correspondance from this person went to a deputy secretary who "managed" the relationship in a highly satisfying way from the Department's point of view, the guy never worked out why all his competitors could get government grants, but his requests always seemed non compliant. It served the bugger right.
Hint AOPA - if you think that the medical costs too much, find out why CASA thinks it costs that much. Also find out what a full aviation medical check would cost in the private sector, assuming you could find one doctor who could do all the tests - without the regulation that you only paid $100. I suspect you would find $245 total cost represents good value. A mate of mine had a triple bypass after the tests found coronary disease.
If you still think $245 is too steep, then work out with CASA what can be cut to get CASA's cost base down.
My guess is that without a Pauline conversion, AOPA's file is too thick for it to recover any credibility with CASA, and the result is that eventually CASA will ask the RAA to represent the GA industry instead.