Originally Posted by
rutan around
If the above produces no result then refuse to carry politicians of all stripes on small planes to isolated places where there is no airline service. That should get media attention and certainly the pollies attention.
Recently a bunch of pollies wanted a charter out of Bundaberg and found to their consternation there wasn't a charter company. This in a town that has grown continuously over the years and once had a tower. Surely that should have been a wake up call.
The service refusal idea probably wouldn't work because there are too many Pinkys and Bings out there.
Rutan around, I don't know about Pinkys and Bings. I do know that there are many out there who are trying to put food on the table to feed their families so we can't blame an individual for not carrying out your threat. There are others who would sell out of GA but their businesses are worth nothing.
Truth is we all have some fault if you you want to study history to inform the current debate. We all have basked in some flying glory and never really questioned the impositions, like special aviation medicals, which separated us from ordinary beings. Own up its just human nature. Like the notion that we are given 'privileges' with our licences, we forgot to be a free people with rights to pursue happiness. Everyone loves a privilege so we went along with this illusion, a concept that we are still lumbered with, leftover from the medieval stricture that the Crown has all rights and dispenses privileges to it's subjects. The Crown, in law, still owns all land in Australia which you are allowed to 'hold freely', hence power to big brother.
The USA overthrew these stultifying notions two hundred years ago, we need some of that burning ambition for freedom, not for personal gratification but for the prosperity of the nation.
The requirements for aviation medicals is an excellent case in point. There is no actual evidence for the safety of flight being enhanced, car driver medicals has been satisfactory for RAAus for twenty years, and for road users. The US has, recently, in spite of the vested interests of a powerful aviation medicine lobby, just about deleted the requirement for nearly all private flying.
What do we do? Support anyone who is trying for reform, put to your organisation that AOPA, AMROBA, TAAAF, RAAus, Ben Morgan are to be supported in the push for a new form of aviation regulation, deregulation with simple rules. Write, ring email MPs, media and get to meetings. We mean change to the Civil Aviation Act, a new model to replace the failed independent Commonwealth Corporate body of CASA. Enough, 830 average $139,000 pa working a 7 1/2 hour day not subject to the Public Service rules. Chairman Jeff Boyd tells us that the rules are a mess, after 28 years still not finished, Mark Skidmore's "Tiger Team", 26 employed on a make work program to fix what he said was a model rule set! There'd be gales of laughter if it wasn't killing an industry with taxpayer funds and fees gouged from GA.