Duke,
A couple of points, if I may:
• The QF flight into Canberra was supposed to have the tower opened: the controller was late for his morning start. See GaryGNU's post above.
• While 1130PM may be a quiet time for lighties, you cannot have E airspace turned on or off easily. I have been in many situations where workload during CTAF segregation with VFRs (and other IFRs) would have made also complying with procedural ATC a nightmare had we had E down to 700ft at that airport. If I had cancelled IFR so I could better manage the situation what was the point of having it in the first place?
• I can see little point in being procedurally controlled by an ATC down an instrument approach. They are not going to stop me flying into a hill. Now if we had low-level ADS-B coverage, fair enough, but Dick won't let us have that. E just will not work efficiently outside surveillance (radar or ADS-B) coverage. So what's the point? To separate IFRs? Do we need it with the traffic levels we have? Ironically, in some areas, Class E would gridlock the airspace, whereas our G-Plus works well.
Let's face it, the only reason Class E was invented was to allow VFR free reign, off frequency, hoping they don't clobber a jet (how many RAs on VFR occur in E airspace in the US?). Nothing more, nothing less. The John and Martha King (IIRC) roadshow, sponsored by the NASIG a few years ago, said exactly that.
If we can afford to have a controller watching every IFR approach in IMC to stop them running into a hill, (or at least be manned for the worst case) then fair enough, but Dick is screaming from the rooftops about pilots losing jobs because of costs, so what is he on about? The fact is nobody has done an accurate study of just how much replacing G with E would cost. I know the controllers in my part of the world just could not cope with procedural E without a significant split-up of the sectors, based on what I hear on the radio.
Was Senator Heffernan the clown that "Whooped" it up then ran away in the corridors in Parliment House in front of the media?
Wasn't he also seen running towards Terry Hills yelling "I'm gunna get you for this!".
