A question for Dick Smith who started this thread.
Where did you go wrong?
You were the man who was in charge all those years ago
Romeopapa,
Where did Dick go wrong? In grossly underestimating the resistance of "the industry" to any change, and now so many of you are whinging, whining and bitching about the state of the industry, because you did not have the whit to understand the need for change -- and get behind Dick.
After all, what he wanted to do was apply a normal and rational business approach to Australian aviation, not an approach that said that, somehow, aviation in Australia was special and unique, and the experience of the rest of the world, especially USA, didn't count.
Indeed, the resistance to anything the Yanks did (do) was (is) illogical in the extreme, they had and have the lowest cost system combined with the world's best airsafety outcomes, but that wasn't good enough for us, we had to have, and have, a vastly more expensive system, with demonstrably worse airsafety outcomes.
Fortunately, the total of Australian GA is little more than a rounding error on the statistics for the North American continent's aviation, so we have little effect on the world wide stats.
The ridiculous misrepresentation of the meaning of "affordable safety" , just for starters, most of you preferred "unaffordable safety", now you are paying the unaffordable cost of unaffordable safety -- with lousy airsafety outcomes to boot.
Airspace wise, you are paying the cost of not having a proper risk managed and cost/benefit justified ( ie; ICAO) airspace management system. Instead, you have demanded and got an inverted system, as the risk decreases, so the CNS/ATM resources applied increase, and you are paying $$$$ for it.
How many of you actively opposed the direction of CASA, in recent years -- effectively opposed, you didn't, and as a result (amongst other things) you are now paying for the monstrous Part 61.
We have a current NPRM Part 132, another piece of gross overkill, applies to Limited Category aircraft --- and the Australian Warbirds Association Ltd. are supporting it --- which is about as smart as turkeys voting for Christmas ( or Thanksgiving if you are a Yank, like the CEO of AWAL ) ---- To roughly quote a former CASA CEO, about 60 odd pages of new crimes, all to solve a non-existent problem ---- this is just another example of the regulatory insanity gripping Australian aviation.
Don't blame Dick Smith, look in a mirror!!
Tootle pip!!