Aviations Future:
This is dire in Australia if the current situation continues.
Over regulation, improper regulations, interference with due process, prosecution of people without due cause, double jepoardy in charges and on and on.
Where to next is the question that must be posed.
Under Labor, more of the same with a Minister that “Just does not get it…”
Under the coalition, a regulation change and a personel change??
We must have answers.
The following is a briefing paper which exposes some of the issues that are incumbent in this “must have” argument.
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Aviation Future – Is There One?
The future of aviation in Australia, which is the basis for modern travel, is essential in Australia, as for the rest of the world. The future of aviation within Australia cannot be easily separated from it’s international connections and context. Yet the core of successful Australian aviation is General Aviation[GA].
The basis for aviation is ensuring a high level of safety for all the users of the system. ICAO has provided, what is shown to be a strong base for aviation. Aviation’s future though, can be affected, in fact defined by the method of application of the direction provided by ICAO in the local context by CASA and ATSB .
Aviation must have a strong and vibrant system within the local setting as a proper base for successful aviation.
The aviation industry, beset by a myriad of partitioned segments. These have, to a large degree, self-interest. This has given us an aviation industry, which does not have clear direction and often moves in disparate ways.
Perhaps this is from the very “roots” of aviation in the 1920’s, where a fragmented base developed. This was supported [or maybe, just developed further] with the dependence in the war years of the 40’s, on aviation.
This fragmentation can be seen in the training of pilots, engineers and of LAME s. It carries through into the regulator, with the fragmentation of the process of regulation.
The regulator, with a process that has taken over 25 years, has led to a system, which is now “more broken” than before the process started. A classic example is CAO 100.5 which would have seen all GA planes grounded within zero to 100 hours of it’s promulgation on 1st August 2013.
Much the same as the AvGas scandal in the late 1990’s of which the regulator was aware, at least 6 months earlier, but failed to act.
A simpler basis for aviation must be developed.
There are seriously embedded self interest groups, who will have to release some of the “control” they have developed, if there is to be any improvement in what is now a very broken system. People are locked in a battle for survival – in a financial and regulatory sense.
This battle is very noisy within industry. The outside community, which needs or at the very least, uses aviation, hears very little. The recent 4-Corners and other current affairs programmes lead to community disquiet.
There are lots of examples that the community sees, which are focussing on quite negative issues. These do more to deride the industry [issues] or just cause the community to lose faith in the industry.
We now have a regulator which favours the “big end of town”, rather than giving a range of reasonable regulations for aviation to prosper.
The regulator in it’s “Directions in/of Operation” or micro-management, interferes in the economic activity, which is not the regulator’s function. Yet the Australian regulator, in it’s activities has industry economic interference at a higher level than any other Government Department/ Instrumentality that I have seen over the past 45 years.
Copyright – August 2013