Like P51D,
I was also offended by the comment made by lando4x about the Broome Cagro's. It seems everytime Cagro's are mentioned on Prune, 4X has to have some negative comment regarding Broome and the Ca/grs service there. I can only presume that he was once at Broome as a new pilot and obviously had some run-in with the Cagro there at the time and has forever held a grudge - real professional attitude eh?
As for Broome being dangerous, well show me the incident reports to justify your concerns ? CASA certainly don't think so. Broome does get busy, normally around the lunchtime RPT's, but the RELEVANT traffic information service given by the Cagro's greatly reduces the frequency congestion and is more than sufficient in the majority of circumstances - take away the Ca/grs and just think about all the unneccessary aircraft to aircraft transmissions and overtransmitting on the CTAF that would take place if everyone had to ask the positions of each other when its busy and then work out if they are relevant traffic or not? The cagro assesses the positions of every aircraft , against a set traffic criteria, and only gives the conflicting aircraft as traffic. Saves a lot of frequency congestion and pilot workload I would have thought ! This is pretty simple stuff, even for 4X.
And Dick,
I really find it hard to understand your about face at times. Wasn't it you when in charge of CASA, who instigated the development of the Cagro service? Wasn't it you who demanded that a Cagro service was introduced at AYE on safety grounds? I would have thought that you should be supporting the introduction of more Cagro services at many regional airports, given your previous involvement in its development and its cost effectiveness as a safety enhancement service. Yet in recent posts, you now support class D towers at both Broome and Ayers Rock. Whatever happened to "affordable safety" ? Have you thought about the huge increase in costs of providing a class D tower with at least 5 controllers, as opposed to only 2 cagro's at these locations, for the very few times throughout the year that the increase in saftey is warranted ? And then there is cost of constructing Control Towers, extra taxiways and various other infrastructure required before ATC would even consider providing class D tower. I have no doubt that in the future that this will be required, but current movements suggest that the need for an ATC service is still some years away. Maybe you should do a bit of research and ask a few of the local GA operators as well as Qantas/Virgin/Skywest/Air North pilots what they think of the Cagro service at these aerodromes and if they are willing to pay the extra cost of an ATC tower at these locations. After all, they are the pilots who actually USE the aerodromes everyday - and then maybe you would have a better appreciation of how well the Cagro service is supported at Broome and Ayers Rock.