and the response!
Daniel Thank you for your email.
Firstly and much to the surprise of most pilots that write to us, you would be hard pressed to find anything on the website which is incorrect and not supported in some way by documents and or evidence.
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ALERTS Yes if we were talking about car crashes then cars running red lights would be a good example of a leading indicator of road fatalities.
REGULATIONS Yes there are penalties in the CAR but unlike the road experience it is necessary to establish a full legal case before proper CAR penalties can be considered. CASA is running scared because it was bullied by pilots over being judge, jury and executioner in the past and even if this legacy didn't exist it is too short of investigators to do anything about most of the CAR breaches. Our members have all too often encountered 1) difficulty getting CASA to consider obvious breaches, 2) difficulty gathering information on the offending aircraft because it is now trendy to keep transponders turned off and then 3) after photographs and Air Services Charts have conclusively established a breach there is a flurry of excuses about cloud cover or stray birds or freak winds. The CAR are an amazing set of leaky regulations and they are exploited daily over the City of Kingston (probably in most cases out of ignorance).
INCIDENTS I will look further into your comment about incidents but I believe you might be thinking about serious incidents. All incidents are leading indicators of an unsafe situation and the public has the right to know about them.
BIRDS Birds can bring down planes. The airport is in a recognised bird hazard area. The airport warns pilots about the birds. Birds are another leading indicator of an unsafe situation.
INEXPERIENCED PILOTS There is no argument about the skies over the City of Kingston being full of inexperienced pilots. Yes all pilots need to learn somewhere. Given the mobility of planes one might ask why training has to be over 150,000 people. In moderation it might be possible to train at Moorabbin but we are no longer talking moderation, there are hundreds of thousands of circuits completedover the residents of Kingston.
STUNTS AND FORMATION Sorry but the picture on the website was taken over Aspendale and none of the planes had their transponders turned on. None of the planes appeared on Air Services Charts. Yes I would consider 5 or 6 jet fighter flying over my house at low altitude a dangerous event.
FLYING OVER PUBLIC GATHERINGS When there are hundreds or thousands of movements in one day and there are five or more options for approaching the airport it is very easy to identify planes which are doing the wrong thing. Two planes which approach within a minute of two of each other would have very similar flying conditions. If one chooses to fly over an event and the other is courteous enough to make a detour of a hundred feet or so then the matter becomes pretty self evident as it was on the days in question.
TERRORISM Actually it is amazingly easy to approach planes and helicopters at the airport aside from the lack of screening of baggage and the token screening of "student pilots".
THE REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE REGULATIONS ARE SOFTER Under 544kg this is a fact. We are talking about many single engine planes.