Flying Training in OZ.....

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

This is an article from Avweb (USA)....

I was 'dreamin' that THIS may have happened in OZ, or maybe it did ......several years ago.

With our weather and terrain, (generally), we should be doing this here..... Think of the Dollars we could generate....

"The other day, I was floating along in the Cub listening to the radio chatter when it occurred to me that I hadn't heard a native English speaker for several minutes. I listened for several more and determined that, sure enough, there were no native English speakers on the frequency. Judging by the accents, there were Indians, Germans or Italians and at least one Chinese, but no American English speakers.

I'm not about to launch off on a nativist tear here, but quite the opposite. There's a reason for all these foreign accents here in the skies over Florida. It's because the U.S. remains the preferred place for students from all over the world to learn to fly. And the reasons for that are several. One is that gas is cheaper and despite our incessant whining about the FAA, the regulatory burden in the U.S. is less onerous than about anywhere else." (Sic)

I thought we used to do this here....What went wrong...??

No Cheers...:{

[Clare Prop]

I "built hours" in Florida and it was an great place, good weather, easy to get to from Europe, cheap aircraft, lots of interesting places to fly to, great service from ATC (they let me do touch and goes at Cape Canaveral :D) But on the other had also home to some seriously shonky flying schools.

Australia could have competed for the hour building market and still can if they would just get their act together, what has gone wrong is CASA closing down the licensing sections in the regional offices and creating the monster called CLARC which now takes several months to do what used to take the local offices a day, or even less for a packet of tim tams. So anyone who wants to fly on an overseas licence may or may not get the paperwork before they go back home, bearing in mind they are usually here for just a couple of weeks (even with several months lead time).

I've had a situation with all the ducks in a row for a gent with an FAA licence, just the flight review to do. Hundreds of dollars paid to CASA by the punter, a hire worth several thousand to me and lots of touristy places in remote areas, all down the drain because one clerical worker took a sickie and nobody could take over the paperwork and issue the Certificate of Validation after all that. This sort of :mad::mad: makes the hour building product worthless.

As for having the required ID for an ASIC so they can actually buy fuel...not possible for a non resident so they have to apply for a state drivers licence when they arrive and wait for that to be issued so they can have secondary ID.

What went wrong with training was the Airports Act in 1996 and the airports being made into land banks by greedy developers sending costs through the roof and being uncompetitive. Schools running as Ponzi schemes haven't helped.

[Bankrupt84]

Another issue with attracting flght students (ones wishing to go commercial) is the new Part 61 law for the issue of ATP.

A lot of those Indian students build hours in remote countries to get the ATP hours, once they have them they return to the place where the license is issued, sit a flight test in a Seneca and then have a ATP which allows them access to jobs back in India.

Why would they come to Australia when South Africa, Canada and USA give them an option of an affordable ATP?

[roundsounds]

Surely you must be mistaken! (sarcastic tone applied).
The primary driver behind Part 61 was to harmonise the Australian Flight Crew Licencing rules with ICAO SARPS. Failure to harmonise would risk the loss of many dollars from the enormous amount of training we do for overseas customers.
Here's an extract from the regulation impact statement:
These inconsistencies with ICAO standards can reduce the likelihood of international students selecting Australia to train for a flight crew licence and for Australian flight crew licences to be accepted by other countries. It is important to note that it is not possible to quantify the extent of the risk or to define a point at which the level of ICAO inconsistency would threaten Australia’s international reputation or ability to trade in the international aviation market.
Obviously harmonising with ICAO guidelines would mean pilots trained in Australia could simply go back to their own country and pick up their local NAA issued licence and vice versa for pilots trained in other ICAO signatory countries!
Sounds great in theory, but I don't think that's how it ended up?