Icarus 2001,
Believe it or not, one of the best replies I've ever read. No I'm not taking the mickey out of you, you obviously care enough to respond so let me offer something back to you in turn.
ADS-B may o rmay not solve the problems we speak of. You're obviously sold on the idea, but radar sites can provide redundancy too. Yes, it's expensive, but what isn't. It's also proven design.
Gaunty provided an excellent copy of an article about reducing low altitude routing and the cost savings in fuel consumption alone. You would think the Yanks would be all over this article, and I can't figure out why they're not.
I see on another post you feel the 737-200 with a combination of charter and scheduled flying could be profitable. ADS-B might, indeed be the answer to help that operation as well, although the scheduled run seems to be thin on conflicting traffic.
You and I both know that you can't even fly passengers on IFR flights outside of 25 miles in the USA without an instrument rating, to do so commercially, you also have to have 1,200 hours! Not a wet licence and a 175 hours like in Australia. The Yanks realised years back that the Freedom of Information Act would make a mockery of their theory courses, so that was their antidote.
I have no doubt that you have problems on the ground with congestion. The reference to pouring concrete was to be taken quite literally. You have to have infrastructure.
Any new airspace with "heads down technology" in the cockpit also prevents see and avoid. There was and still is a widespread reluctance to deal with controllers in the Australian general aviation movement and an instrument rating with a requirement for flight to capital city airports would help alleviate this concern. It will also help put an end to the stories of incompetence that many controllers have told in these threads of general aviation pilots who do not comply with clearances or bust CTA boundaries.
The need for an instrument rating on the Australian Certificate is long overdue, so is the need to "retire" some of these testing officers who are running printing presses, not responsible assessments. It's totally on thread.
Whining about the failures of the past and the lack of foresight in training and distribution as the last changes occurred is totally irrelevant to this discussion. We only have what is here and now and we can only hope to plan for the future!
Thank you, I will have a nice day and I hope you do too!