initial NAS brief to industry
 

This afternoon Mike Smith outlined the state of play on the NAS program to the NSW RAPAC in yep Sydney. Maritime headquarters had been briefed this morning along the same lines.
Some dot points,

- Advised that the program had been endorsed by Cabinet.
- has a team including ASA, Defence and DOTRS but deliberately not CASA.
- expects to have a website up and running by late tomorrow subject to the usual acceptance of computing stuff vis if it works properly.
- largely based on the US system.
- oversite by Defence of the education program using some resources drawn from current CASA pilot education team.
- should pick up on some of the unused capability in TAATS that we paid a fortune for.

initial changes scheduled for 28 nov will be
- introduction of common freq for all aerodromes and strips that do not have a CTAF or MBZ ( no i'm not promulgating the frequency)

- Area QNH can be used from any site within 100nm of current operation ( for those dummies too slack to get a forecast dont ask for it over the ATS frequency , get it from flightwatch or tonsils will be removed without anaesthetic. We know who you are..................)

These two comms issues are intended to reduce the rubbish calls on the ATS frequencies.

- availability of VFR climb for IFR ops in VMC in E airspace to specifically address some RPT problems.


Additional changes/modifications will flow in conjunction with education programs.

Use of Military Operating Areas for airspace currently used for operations other than weapons delivery was discussed briefly to highlight a change to the culture that will be required as well as a rule changes.

Finally don't send Mike emails asking for detailed replies to SOP's etc. Brief phone calls will probably get the info you need at the moment.

Beer time,

Cheers

Syd

4 Questions:
1 Any names given of who the "Team" is?
2 Why no industry representation?
3 What TAAATS unused capability?
4 Anything stated about a safety case?

Still not much detail and very little time for "Education".

At last some information.
 

That would be 28 November 2003 ? Must be.:rolleyes: Only three months away otherwise.

Errrr???

Wasn't that meant to be LOCAL QNH?


BTW; if the 3 proposed changes were introduced on 28Nov02, what would be the issue? Simple as ABC I'd have thought.

G'day ;)

The IFR climbing in VMC as VFR (VFR rules re separation issues, I assume) would need changes to regs NPRM process etc. would it not? Or is this some other interpretation?

Bottle of rum

Feather 3 With those three proposed changes, how much lead time do you think would be required to prepare an education campaign (not just a notam) have it approved and publish it.

How much lead time would be required to place ads in industry magazines?

The next ERSA is due out in September, so that opportunity is missed.

Maybe it could be fast tracked (like AOC amendments:rolleyes: ) it is possible, which may serve to confuse those that don't fly five days a week.

Icarus ,

I guess you're right. The two latter changes aren't a drama for weekenders, but the frequency one has, on sober reflection, disaster potential. You'd need it in at least one safety mag issue.

Aaah! Patience; we'll get there eventually!!:D

G'day ;)

But wait a sec....
 

If, as Dick Smith kept telling me - interspersed with veiled threats and insults to my intelligence - that CASA has responsibility and power to implement airspace reform, why would the government set up an airspace reform team [my bolding]

BTW: the airspace determining power remains AA’s, and AA’s alone, and the power with respect to classes of airspace still has those magic words “in accordance with Annex 11 to the Chicago Convention”.

Any sign yet of a website or any other information?

Is the intent to use forecast local QNH or actual? Currently we can't pass QNH values more than 30 min old, and that would include most forecast values.

If this measure has been introduced for ATC efficiency it is hard to see any value. In my group it will mean maintaining a record in the AIF on 13 half-hourly met-reports (currently ignored unless requested) AND Area QNH (to fill the gaps) and then decide which to use when assigning altitudes. Great leap forward...

Please, please, please!!! Someone put NAS out of its misery. It's dying a long, slow and agonizing death.

Airspace expertise appears to be lacking. Consultation is not being done, and doesn't seem about to be started. Knowledge of the processes required to introduce the changes appears glaring in its adsence.

How long do we have to watch this go on?

It isn't going away.

At all the NAS briefings thus far, the Bill & Ben team have said that there will be no Industry consultation regarding NAS, that consultation has been done to death over the last 15 years (sound familiar?), and that Cabinet has said "implement it". The only consultation will be over the implementation of the various NAS elements ie when they will be introduced, the education etc etc. In a nutshell, nothing is negotiable. Evidently when this was said at the NSW & BN RAPACs, no-one objected - they just sat there in stunned silence.

They also claim that CASA has said that no safety case for NAS itself will be required, only one on the implementation.

Not surprisingly, the documentation on the DoTRS site contains a degree of Dick-speak, and the rhetoric at the briefings was a repeat of most of what Dick said here, in a lot of instances almost word for word.

Finally, it was also said - "don't believe what you read on PPRuNe" :)

I understand that not only will there be no consultation (apparently we had a certain quota available to us over the last decade or so and somebody's darn gone and squandered it) and no design safety case there will also be no industry representation on the Implementation Group.

Mike also admitted that elements of NAS are not appropriate for Australia (ie FL180 tramsition from E to A) but he ain't gunna change it because then it won't be exactly like the "off the shelf"one in the US and God forbid we would have to do a safety case.

World's best practice.

PS.Turns out that the US (north American they call it) model is about as far from ICAO compliant as you can get. Apparently the ICAO compliance requirement that Dick has hounded everyone about for years (still on his web site) doesn't matter anymore.

Must be a different ICAO.

Neddy

Correct on all counts, and from some paperwork I saw a while back there were 20-odd differences with ICAO.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.

I also wonder about this tripe about how MBZs are no safer than CTAFs, when CASA said in their Part 71 responses that they had been proven to be 3-4 times safer, and they had no intention of removing them.