News from the Roadshow...
Well my spies in sunny Canberra tell me that the first NAS King/Smith Roadshow presentation was...predictable.
Some highlights...
Canberra was obviously chosen as a "soft" starting point for Mike Smith to warm up his power point presentation and smooth out any wrinkles prior to travelling to more challenging locations. The audience was full of CASA and AsA staff! All there of their own free will of course. So no challenging questions there then. Even Dick Smith kept quiet.
Apparently the NAS will " create an anvironment for growth by bringing in a simpler and more flexible system" and will "save $70 million for our industry". Who will actually save the money and over what time period?
DTI is to remain until at least after June 2004 as it is not in the changes scheduled for then. It will only be removed when there is something to replace it. Huh?
Frequency boundaries will disappear from charts to be replaced by frequency boxes showing the location of the transmitter. Pilot's will simply use the one that they think is the closest and most appropriate. This is only on ERC and TAC's.
The Kings were really pushing the message that NAS will stimulate GA and apparently FBO's will pop up everywhere to service your every need. So clearly it has been our airspace system that has been hindering any growth in GA all this time. If only we had known we could have fixed it earlier!
Mike Smith's presentation was VERY quickly presented, no time to linger on messy details, simply gloss over the gaps. The Dorothy Dixer questions from CASA stooges were apparently all too obvious.