Bankstown Airport – Desperately Sad

[no_one]

There are two things that will lead to the eventual demise of Aviation in Australia; Loss of access to airports and bureaucratic interference. I have the benefit of having lived in the USA for a while and learning to fly there. I have seen a different approach to aviation.

Part of the key differences between Australia and Here is how united the pilots organisations are in their fight to maintain their status quo or indeed even improve their conditions for aviation. Here is Australia thereare constant squabbles between the different branches of aviation. You only have to look at the threads on this site to find people complaining about gliders and RAAus, or suggesting that homebuilts need more restriction. The converse is true on other sites, with complaints about RPT doing straight in approaches at uncontrolled fields. Until the participants unite to a common purpose the continuation of Aviation in this country in under threat.

I am also amazed at how many Australians have never been in a small aircraft. While a high proportion of Australians have jetted off overseas far fewer have been in a single engine aircraft. This leads to a perception in people’s minds that private aviation is only something that a select few rich people can enjoy. It’s why the boat ramps are safe from “user pays”, even those who don’t have a boat know someone who does and at some pointjust about every Australian has been out in one. When they hear of an airport closure or increases in landing fees it triggers no more reaction than the rugby results might trigger in an AFL fan. For this reason it won’t be Dick Smith who is able to galvanise the populous to action but will take the effort of “regular”individuals, people who work “normal” jobs who like flying and not feeding bait prawns to flathead or being towed behind an outboard on water-skis.

Imagine if there was a program similar to the EAA’s Young Eagles program operating in Australia. The young eagles program provides free flightsto kids between the age of 8 and 17 in homebuilt aircraft by private pilots.Now some, here on this website, would recoil in horror at the thought; No commercial license, no AOC, experimental aircraft!!!! But if 50% of the kids in the Wyong area had been for a free flight the article linked above about the increase in landing fees at Warnervale could have been straight out of the newspapers “think of the kiddies” back catalogue. What politician would like to be the one facing the press in these circumstances?

The fixing of aviation can be done. It will take a change ofheart of a number of individuals and organisations. It will take a lot of work. I only hope that we are up for the challenge.