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KLN94
9th Aug 2004, 07:32
I wonder who Pemberton Strong is?


Dick Smith targets Jetstar at Avalon

By aviation correspondent Pemberton Strong:

So what's Dick Smith up to now? He's successfully milked the "little Aussie battler" image in so many areas in his life as aviator, publisher, food manufacturer and marketer, retailer, regulator, and the republican issue. Remember when his Australian Geographic magazine was proudly Australian, but was being printed in Asia all those years ago. He kept quiet about that till sprung and forced to fess up.

As a self promoter and spotter of trends, he's a master, like Dickie Branson from Britain who's a bit more cynical than Dick would ever be. But our Dick (Smith) is back and up to his old tricks again.


Having just been publicly humiliated with the recent announcement that his 'New Airspace System' (NAS) will largely be rolled back later this year due to safety levels not being improved, Dick is now targeting Qantas and Geoff Dixon over Jetstar's use of Avalon Airport in Melbourne.

He posted the letter to Dixon that he intends to print on a full-page advertisement in The Australian, on the well known commercial pilot's news group PPRuNe here.


Judging by the responses, it's very easy to see just how Dick is considered by fellow pilots. He's not liked, or appreciated. It's a sort of "get stuffed" to Dick from the flying fraternity.

And he hasn't stopped there with this story in the Melbourne Age: Jetstar pilots fly blind: Dick Smith


Talk about flogging a horse with everything to get himself some publicity. But wait there's more from the captain's chair.

There's the time Dick decided he was going to sue Australia's air traffic control provider, Airservices Australia, for endangering his family by not giving him clearance to over fly Sydney Airport in his single engine Cessna whilst on a flight back from Lord Howe Island to Bankstown.


The indignant Dick, who did not have a flight plan submitted for what was already an extremely risky long over water flight in a single engine aeroplane, was angry that he wasn't given clearance through Sydney airport's busy airspace which would have resulted in numerous large jets with hundreds of people aboard having to divert around him. Read on PPRuNe again here and here.


And then there was the time Dick suspected that he was being targeted by a PR firm in a "dirty tricks campaign". Check that one out here.

Obviously Dick is suffering from Limelight Deprivation Syndrome or a similar affliction. Threatening Qantas is a bit like "We Warn the Czar". Oh dear, another irritation for Geoff Dixon (GOD) to go with the campaign against the unlevel international playing field, foreign carriers like Emirates and trying to snuggle up to the once much feared Singapore Airlines, which was one of those which had titled the playing field its way in a former life as a substantially government-owned airline. (There are obviously good government airline and bad ones. Bad ones are those that come in and try to break up a cosy duopoly).

Strange how there's an outbreak of selective amnesia at the top of Qantas these days. If it’s contagious they might not remember just who Dick Smith is. Now wouldn't that be galling for the "little Aussie bleeder"?

Crikey Media 9/8/2004
www.crikey.com.au

CaptainMidnight
9th Aug 2004, 07:49
An astute chap, whoever he is :ok:

Uncommon Sense
9th Aug 2004, 09:22
The real meat of that story was this line:

Dick is suffering from Limelight Deprivation Syndrome or a similar affliction

Thats exactly the reason why you should not respond here to Dicks wind-ups anymore, if like me you do not appreciate his agenda.

Publicity is his oxygen.

Responding to him here gives him some credibility to self-promote his importance, ergo: gets more oxygen.

Cut off the oxygen.

CaptainMidnight
9th Aug 2004, 09:53
I agree. I think the only reason he keeps posting to PPRuNe is because he is guaranteed to get responses. Outside, no-one in the industry with any brains will respond to him.

AirNoServicesAustralia
9th Aug 2004, 11:01
You know what would really get up his nose. If everyone put him on there "ignore" lists, and posted here to say so. If everyone did that he wouldn't have an audience for his rubbish anymore. Anyway he is on my ignore list, because after trying to get a straight answer to a lot of straight questions for the last year, I have given up. As Common Sense suggests, lets cut off his oxygen and make him go crawl under some other rock.

FishHead
9th Aug 2004, 23:08
KLN94,

Where is the article on the Crikey site??
Or is it in the private mailout to subscribers, and not posted to the huddling masses as yet?

FH

gaunty
10th Aug 2004, 00:14
FishHead

That's pretty much the length and breadth of the article less the PPRuNe links.

If you want the news behind the news usually before its published in Oz void of puffery and cant and a Murdoch and Packer free zone, this is the place to go.

The letter to Geoff? you heard it here first.

FishHead
10th Aug 2004, 00:23
gaunty - I'm a regular reader of Crikey... but like everything in that vein, you cant necessarily believe everything you read...

Like Farenheit 9/11.... hardly a documentary, more like propaganda. But you have to read propaganda from both the far left, and the far right, and realise that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

gaunty
10th Aug 2004, 01:31
FishHead

You got that in one, but at least Crikey is democratic and offends everybody equally. :)

9/11F correctamundo but it seems to be PC at the moment to second guess the past as far as Iraq and 9/11 is concerned.

When I start along the road of maybe this and maybe that, I just go back to the video of the whole horrific live right in your own living room event. That to me is the reality.

I was actually PPRuNing when the first report popped up on the main Reporting Points, just minutes after the first impact as simply "an aircraft" with some speculation of the type and so on, mrs gaunty was walking past and I mentioned it to her to be told minutes later to come quick "it's live on CNN", it was prime time in Perth. Apart from monitoring here, we sat up all night watching the whole thing live including the second and subsequent impacts.
After the second impact I rang every one of my three children scattered around the world at the time, all of whom were in bed time zones to alert them to the fact, that we have a "war" on our hands and to turn on thier TVs and stand by.

I also watched the internet slow down to a crawl and stop 'traffic jammed' for long periods with people communicating and searching for news.

Propganda, you bet and IMHO it wasn't Dubya making the running.

GT-R
10th Aug 2004, 06:40
http://www.users.on.net/~deljron/forum%20pix/cryt.gif

KLN94
10th Aug 2004, 07:18
FH

Yes it was in the email sent out to 15,000 in boxes that they send daily. I always find it to be a good read and I quite often read about issues there before they end up in main stream media. It is usually pretty funny as well.

This is not the first time Crikey has printed the Dick Smith drama as seen here: http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119246&highlight=crikey

Can I suggest you go to Crikey at http://www.crikey.com.au/subscribe.html and sign up for the full subscription or alternatively the free service at the bottom of the page to see what it is like.

KLN94