All,
Real airspace management reform is as about as effective as CASA regulatory reform.
From today's Australian. As it happens, I was going through some old bookshelves in the last day or so, and came across a copy of Dick's book, "!2 Months In The Aviation Hall of Doom", it is amazing how little has changed, and how we suffer restrictions here, unknown in the rest of the civilised aviation world.
We continue to suffer all sorts of inefficiencies, that not only do not makes things "safer", ie; reduce risk, but arguably increase risk.
Tootle pip!!
Williamtown delays a danger, says Dick Smith
AVIATOR Dick Smith has warned that "reckless and dangerous" outdated military air-traffic control procedures near RAAF Williamtown are putting small aircraft at risk.
Mr Smith is upset that visual flight rules aircraft travelling along the NSW coastal lane are being held near RAAF Williamtown to allow small airliners to take off from the shared airport.
"It is an incredibly important safety issue and I am amazed no one has been killed," the former Civil Aviation Safety Authority chairman said this week. "It will happen soon, as nowhere in the world do air-traffic controllers hold single-engine aircraft orbiting and intermingling over an ocean or over a crowded beach."
Mr Smith has written to the chief of the Air Force, Air Marshall Geoff Brown, to express his fears about the safety issues and the fact that he is regularly held at Nobbys Beach or Anna Bay for up to nine minutes.
He cites one occasion where he was held for seven minutes at Nobbys while interweaving with four hang gliders flying at 500ft, and other times where he had been held with other fixed-wing aircraft at Nobbys, all orbiting at 500ft. "Just how there has not been a mid-air collision is amazing," he said.
Mr Smith said he had been lobbying on this issue for three decades and his investigations had shown some of the airspace procedures and design forced on military air-traffic controllers dated back to the 1930s.
He had asked they be updated to be more comparable with procedures "used in modern aviation countries".
In a second letter prompted by another holding incident while enroute from Port Macquarie to Bankstown, Mr Smith said he had been held at Anna Bay in his Cessna Caravan with another single-engine aircraft because of a plane departing Williamtown.
"This is amazing,' he said. "Anna Bay is 12 miles away from the aerodrome and not in line with the runway and there is simply no aircraft known to humankind that would not be able to reach 500ft by the coast after it departed the Williamtown runway.
"Air Marshal Brown, this is incredibly serious. I simply don't know how the Air Force would ever be able to fight a war when the rules and regulations your people have to comply with are so out of date and so reckless and dangerous."
The aviator offered to cover the cost of an RAAF expert travelling overseas to examine how modern and safe air traffic control airspace and procedures work.
Defence had not responded to Mr Smith's claims by deadline.