What SHOULD Post Pandemic Australian General Aviation Look Like?

[Sunfish]

In an effort to inject something other than gloom and doom into Pprune, I am reminded that great crisis are the catalyst for change. Peoples attitudes to change unfreeze during a crisis and the previously unthinkable becomes thinkable. This malleability of thought, plasticity, last for maybe Eighteen months until attitudes again harden into a new orthodoxy. This is not just a personal observation but a well known behavioural trait. Victorians of a certain age will remember such an episode when Geoff Kennett was elected. In the next eighteen months he did the unthinkable, broke unions and institutions, sold assets, started new programs, made a few mistakes but permanently changed Victoria for the better.

So the question then is what would we like GA to look like in say 2023? Not what it might be but what it could be? No room for pessimism. Design your new future here.

[Squawk7700]

In an effort to inject something other than gloom and doom into Pprune, I am reminded that great crisis are the catalyst for change. Peoples attitudes to change unfreeze during a crisis and the previously unthinkable becomes thinkable. This malleability of thought, plasticity, last for maybe Eighteen months until attitudes again harden into a new orthodoxy. This is not just a personal observation but a well known behavioural trait. Victorians of a certain age will remember such an episode when Geoff Kennett was elected. In the next eighteen months he did the unthinkable, broke unions and institutions, sold assets, started new programs, made a few mistakes but permanently changed Victoria for the better.

So the question then is what would we like GA to look like in say 2023? Not what it might be but what it could be? No room for pessimism. Design your new future here.

Seriously dude, enough with creating all these pandemic threads. Pilot are losing their jobs left right and centre and you’re posting this tripe!

[Sunfish]

Squawk7700, unfortunately I understand the pain and I am trying to inject some positive thought. Negativity will get us nowhere.
In the last recession, the one "we had to have" according to Keating, I had to fire 30% of the staff at a business I was managing, then I was fired myself, then I spent 18 months unemployed, suffering like everyone else. Yes, I know what it feels like to queue at Centrelink.

I remember seeing businesses with signs saying "We refuse to participate in a recession". There will be a recovery. Paradoxically, this is the best time to be starting a new business. This is the best time for career change, doing new things. Think outside the box.

So I'm trying to inject something positive? Guilty as charged.

[Squawk7700]

Maybe your efforts would be better directed to an audience such as on Facebook or perhaps the recreational flying forum, rather than the professional pilots rumour network.

[aroa]

"Design your new future here" I wish.!!
Alas, the rich consultants and trough dwellers of CAsA will there there, ready and waiting to (over) control any brave new free-thinking, commonsense pvt aviation or GA world. Bureaurats rule OK ! Unfortunately.
And until we have a revolution and be able to tell 'em where to get off, I'm afraid ...as we were stuffed before we'll be stuffed again.
Thats if theres any GA left after all this in x years time.
Cantberra and the States rule "Cant Country" You cant do this and you cant do that..!

[Clare Prop]

From the flying training industry angle...

For a start, the millions currently being thrown away in VET flying training scams should be used to help GA businesses with actual employees, rather than wannabees, get back on their feet. Surely after this they won't be able to justify it any more?

Secondly, the airports need to be renationalised or severely brought into check regarding their outrageous rents and unconscionable behaviour. Rent invoices were arriving in the email just as ScoMo was doing his press conference yesterday. They will see this is a way to finally get rid of us all. Think how much it would have helped if the amount of VET money that has been wasted and gone offshore could be used to help us pay those rents because sure as eggs they will evict us if we can't pay.

As for CASA...well plenty of others have commented on the things that have unfolded in the last year or so. There are some FOIs and AWIs that need to take a long walk on a short plank and some kind of spirit of co-operation be established.

Airservices - the press seems to say that only airlines will be relieved of charges, I think that should have been for all operators who get airservices charges (someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I have had no word form AsA) Still maybe the airlines think it fair that the flying schools should be subsidising them.

So I hope for a GA that isn't dominated by a few disgustingly rich individuals, a minister who spends his time making gushing videos promoting his mates' schools and handing over millions of bucks to one operator replaced by a level playing field, and a bullying regulator. One where people are fair, where hard work is rewarded and people are grateful for what they have. I'm beginning to sound like my mother. Who, of course, is absolutely right about everything.....

[Checklist Charlie]

What SHOULD Post Pandemic Australian General Aviation Look Like

Unfortunately what it should look like and what we will likely get are 2 very different outcomes.
Clare Prop has summed it up pretty well.

​​​​​​​CC

[sprocket check]

It's a valid subject, I reckon. There is a strong argument that some of the main reasons GA is what is, is purely because it is disjointed, disorganised, without a unified voice and without the hearts and minds of the general public behind it.

There is little to no political clout, little to no effective organisation of lobby groups, GA is fractured within, has far too many egos and opinions (especially for its size) and quite frankly I don't think a single GA organisation could organise a piss-up in a brewery. That is not necessarily because of the organisers but more likely due to the cynicism, back door agendas, infighting etc of its members.

I would like to see GA with:

1. Moral capacity and will to support its members, from engineers to pilots, small to large organisations through all the difficulties they face - so if a bully comes along from within or out, the industry stands together and doesn't let the bully have their way.
2. PR capacity - to capture the hearts, minds and and imagination of the public, to bring a better understanding of what GA does, and even more to inspire the next generation of pilots, engineers, designers to deliver the next 100 years of aviation in ways we have only dared to dream.
3. Legal capacity - with organisational and professional skill to effectively counter bureaucratic oppression
and publicly name and shame and remove from position of influence those that seek to limit GA potential.
4. Financial capacity - to support development, growth, training, legal representation, in all of the above.

When we get engineers supporting aircraft owners in looking after their own aircraft rather than supporting more restrictive regulations to try and protect their limited life livelihoods, we will get more people owning aircraft, we will have more and better engineers.

When we have no fear about sharing our knowledge and contribute to the pool of experience we will have true growth.

When we lose the fear of the Regulator and make the Regulator serve our needs we will have more jobs, new aircraft, new technologies in our new aircraft and maybe, just maybe even a little glimpse of common sense.

When innovation and experience is rewarded and acknowledged, supported and publicised, when success, individual and organisational is supported (rather than cut the tall poppy attitude so prevalent), we will have an energetic, vibrant and inspiring industry. It should be an industry of pioneers, of pilots and engineers breaking the preconception of what is possible. Inspiring the general public into reverence and awe. Inspiring every young man and woman into study of physics, electronics, mechanics, aerodynamics, because they know they will be joining an industry that is THE leading edge of human endeavour in transport.

I could go on... but I have a steak on the pan😁 and Mrs Sprocket is hanging for a glass of red with me🤪

[aroa]

I'd like to see... Pvt aviation just like driving yr car/ute. You have a DL which lasts for 5?10 yrsand NO ASIC . You freely drive where you will without impediment...until you breach a rule ie speeding. Flying: ditto You do NOT get done over for carrying a camera to a job, or other goods for sale as with the bastard aviation Bureaucrazy. Items and the subsequent "commerce" of which have SFA to do with their corrupted ideas about "safety"
Who read page 24 ,Australian March 20, Legal Affairs main story... about the outrageous rise of regs , with a cost to the nation of nearly 200 bil. annually.
And as a CAsA victim, I certainly agree with ." any rule or regulation that doesn't either keep an Australian in a job, or their business open, should be scrapped" Bring it on !
CAsA has a superabundance of exactly this crap in ther armoury...eg R 206... and much much more.
Post Corvid...will there be any political or bureaucratic will to make the neccessary changes to free up Oz society?
I doubt it.

[Sunfish]

During "the recession we had to have" -circa 1990, a lot of us unemployed professionals started serious networking. Out of that process a whole heap of overlapping loose groups of like minded individuals got together to pursue various ideas.

I was part of a group of about thirty who organised their own personal development and business incubator group. None of us had money but between us there were a lot of pooled resources; somebody knew someone with an empty factory, someone else had a van, that sort of thing. Out of that group came a computer software product support business, a manufacturing business, an accounting business, a marketing company. We all had time on our hands when we weren't writing job applications so we got together and talked through our ideas. We cared not about tax, bank accounts, workers compensation and ABN's hadnt been invented.

I would like to think it was possible for a group of like minded pilots and engineers to get together and build a business. Find an empty hangar, a few cheap aircraft to borrow or lease and build something useful out of the ruins of todays GA. For that to happen the regulations must be elastic enough to allow it. This is not just an aviation problem.

[Clare Prop]

Sunfish, the big problem here will be the vulture landlords swooping. I understand states and territories are taking care of commercial rental issues. Being on Commonwealth land this won't apply. This will be seen as a golden opportunity for the leaseholders, who have never made any secret of wanting to gouge the tenants out of business and try to get freehold, to take our buildings off us then rent them to whoever is left or force us to demolish them and get rid of all those annoying runways and taxiways that stand in the way of their tilt-up dream.

[Sunfish]

Clare, they may do that. I am aware of others thinking of starting their own airfields outside the current system. Th dt require much other than immunisation against councils and NIMBYs.