Wot Crosshair said:
And wait for the first C172 with a frightened student pilot with no apparent alternatives, and no one to talk to, mess up the travel plans of 20,000 people, as he fumbles his way through controlled airspace and tries to land at YSSY or YMMB because he sees bad weather coming towards him and no one is available to advise him.
* We should not underestimate the intimidation factor. A low-time VFR pilot, or even an inexperienced charter pilot, listening to an area frequency populated by people calling themselves Qantas A, Singapore B, and Falcon C, is going to be reluctant to pipe up and ask for the wind at the podunk aerodrome he's heading for. Anyone who's done their flight training in the past six or eight years has been told that Centre really doesn't want to hear from you unless you're on an IFR plan, and that you're impinging upon the safety of others if you tie up the frequency. Has that changed?
To put it another way, if AsA really don't want to engage with GA and provide them any services, then its AsA and RTP operators who are going to pay the price.
To put it yet another way, if AsA and RTP operators tell GA to **** off and die, then there goes the consideration, cooperation, and give and take that makes the current system workable. Expect more inadvertant violations of controlled airspace with consequent disruption to RPT operations because whats the point of monitoring the area frequency if no one wants to hear from you and no one wants to provide you any advice? It's already hard enough trying to get some student pilots to communicate with you (especially non English speaking types), and I've had to do orbits on more than one occasion because I could not arrange separation with one of these jokers.
To put it yet another way, simply remove radio voice procedure, and operations in controlled airspace from the VFR syllabus and drop the requirements for carriage of a current ERSA and Charts.
Ohhh, and I guess "flight following" is dead too.