Interesting post
trashie, if not perhaps a slight emotive.
We often compare the aviation industry with the medical and legal professions, but why? Is it because of the expensive, specialised training - yet training that can be undertaken without any minimum education qualification. Or is it because of the responsibility a pilot is required to undertake when transporting his human charges? Or perhaps the comparable salary structures?
Flying, as with medicine, requires manual skills and an ability to quickly adapt one's thought processes to a change in the operating environment.
Unlike medicine and the legal profession, the flying industry is multi-layered, beginning with the zero time 16/60 year old novice, stepping up to the PPL (possibly a Doctor or lawyer) with his own aircraft, a couple of hundred hours, and I.R., who perhaps "moonlights" on the odd occasion. Through to the full-time professionals - the instructors, crop dusters, joy-flight operators, bank runners, commuter pilots, second level airline operators, and major airline pilot employees.
EACH operating to a DIFFERENT standard, simply because they have no NEED nor REQUIREMENT for one to maintain the same standard as another.
Why are airlines more regulated than other levels of aviation? Because of the volume and frequency at which they operate.
For ASFA to make any impact on aviation in Australia they are going to have to "divisionalise" - this must almost sound like a Utopia in the making for most Government managerial types!! But it is - to my mind - the ONLY realistic approach to a multi-layered industry.
Simply broadbrushing ALL flying as "Aviation" will result in yet more money being wasted as the whole machinery slowly becomes bogged down.
A macro approach, employing experienced, well-regarded
PILOTS from each of the tiers identified, in addition to the academic theorist exponents.
And a final question again for you,
trashie;
What is ASFA's association with
Ansett?
Their home page features this link:
Have you visited the
Ansett Star website?
Click here -
http://www.fly.to/ansettstars