I would like to thank everyone for their support, and also for the offers to assist with the legal costs. I will certainly accept these offers if required. The main advantage of having other people involved is that Airservices will not be able to claim that this is just one sole individual with a bee in his bonnet.
I can assure you that I will match any donated money going towards the court case with a donation to the Royal Flying Doctor Service at Broken Hill.
The Airservices press release is extraordinary. The posts by
SM4 Pirate and
JackoSchitt on the inaccuracies/spin/dishonesty of this press release really give support for
Creampuff’s post about “people who don’t comprehend the difference between right and wrong.”
The following claim in the Airservices press release is extraordinary:
Mr Russell said that Airservices undertook a full safety assessment before transition to the new frequencies.
If this safety assessment exists, why wouldn’t they have told the Minister before he answered my letter of 21 February 2007?
Does this so-called “safety assessment” answer the claim by Civil Air in their press release that there will be times when:
… controller workload will almost certainly preclude Air Traffic Control provision of Flightwatch information
I would be confident enough to say that there has never been a proper safety study done. That is, looking at the benefits such as the claimed $500,000 per annum saving to Airservices, as well as the down side – i.e. the fact that there will be times in bad weather when pilots will not be able to get a Flightwatch service.
There also seems to be a belief by some people on this site that Flightwatch is only used by VFR aircraft. This is not true. IFR aircraft use Flightwatch all the time – including charter and commuter operators.
The key to the problem is clearly shown in the media release from Civil Air. That is, Airservices has decided unilaterally to remove a “standalone Flightwatch service”. Later, Civil Air calls on the Minister for Transport, Mr Mark Vaile, to:
…direct Airservices to retain the independent Flightwatch service for the safety and benefit of Australia’s air travelling public.
(My underlining).
Last night I checked my world Jeppesen charts and I cannot find any modern aviation country without a separate Flightwatch/Flight Service/Flight Information Service. I phoned a professional pilot in New Zealand, who assured me that the 12 transmitters operating under the title “Christchurch Information” (which cover all of New Zealand – both the North and South Island) are being retained, and there is not the slightest suggestion that the New Zealand separate Flightwatch system shall be closed down or combined with air traffic control.
It is clear that the management who made the decision to abandon the independent Flightwatch have not communicated to the Airservices Board, or to the industry, that this is a major change that has never been attempted anywhere in the world previously.
By sending out documents implying that it is simply changing a few frequencies, people have been misled.
We should all be indebted to PPRuNe – for first of all pointing out this proposal way back in February (see
here), and also for this particular thread.
Finally,
JackoSchitt has posted an announcement from
The Australian newspaper. This at first sight looks good, but I believe we should be very careful. In the past, Airservices Australia have ignored official directives from the Minister – why wouldn’t they do it this time? I think you will find they will say something like, “Oh, we still have the Flightwatch transmitters there and we are going to put them in ‘ghost mode’, so everything is OK.” Of course, everything will not be OK. You need a week of bad weather to show the problems, and that could be many months away.
I do not believe for a second that this problem has been solved. It will only be solved when Airservices agree to the quite reasonable requests I made in my letter of 12 November 2007 (see
here).