Dick Smith :
"You discredit your argument by constantly misquoting “affordable safety.” Affordable safety is a truism. It had nothing to do with me. Fortunately there are lots of young people coming along who understand that. Possibly it is their schooling."
<buzzer sounds> Wrong! The first mention of the words "affordable safety" may have come from Ratner in 1986, but unfortunately history may harder to rewrite than that - maybe it's a Government conspiracy
Source:
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/c...01/01chr02.htm
"
Aviator and entrepreneur Mr Dick Smith appointed Chair of the CAA under an 'affordable safety' policy crusade. He recruited Mr Frank Baldwin from the New Zealand Aviation Authority to restructure the organisation on a district basis, and reduced staff from 7300 down to 3500 over five years. The CAA Chief Executive Mr Colin Freeland and deputy Mr Alan Rainbird both resigned soon after Mr Dick Smith arrived."
Australian, 16 May 1990;
Sydney Morning Herald, 11 June 1990.
Maybe the young people coming along just havent had the benefit of hindsight that some of us greying fourty-somethings have....they were probably blissfully ignorant of the *crusade* when they were in primary or high school at the time
Don't get me wrong Dick, I had then and have now no problem with your comments on the nonsense of having a FS non-radar service where radar coverage existed, and I told you that in 1990 on the phone (when I could actually get a word in edgeways during the course of the one sided conversation
). Your comment in return (and I remember it vividly) was actually nothing to do with safety - It was that you only wanted to deal with one union, not two, and that two was going to cost too much. Fair enough also... nothing wrong there in wanting flexibility. <tongue firmly in cheek>
But in bugsmasher territory in WA, where 90+% is non-radar, did it really make any sense to remove services to low-level areas, and where these days, 100+ seat jet aircraft are operating into remote mining strips (not PA31s or C441s anymore) with little or no alerting of traffic in the area?
On the flights where I am SLF to the mine, there is at least one more set of eyeballs scanning the sky...I've learnt not to trust the system.
ps Griffo - good to see you're still around...
