A question for Dick Smith who started this thread.

Where did you go wrong?

You were the man who was in charge all those years ago:ok:

Archerfield focus back to GA
 

And a pilot is in charge;

Archerfield Airport abandons plans for regular passenger services

Romeopapa,
Did you follow the running battles he had with the 'vested interests'?
I was around at that time. No wonder he ended up with grey hair.
Mind you, I didn't necessarily agree with everything he proposed, but...


"Hell hath no fury like a vested interest posing as a moral principle".

Hey I go back to the era of Bob Hawke claiming how easy it is to fly an aircraft and Brian McCarthy's tantrums changing the face of Australian aviation for ever:ok::ok:

Romeopapa I'm afraid you haven't been around this game long enough. There just isn't enough time to bring you up to speed.

Tipsy:rolleyes:

Romeopapa,
Where did Dick go wrong? In grossly underestimating the resistance of "the industry" to any change, and now so many of you are whinging, whining and bitching about the state of the industry, because you did not have the whit to understand the need for change -- and get behind Dick.

After all, what he wanted to do was apply a normal and rational business approach to Australian aviation, not an approach that said that, somehow, aviation in Australia was special and unique, and the experience of the rest of the world, especially USA, didn't count.

Indeed, the resistance to anything the Yanks did (do) was (is) illogical in the extreme, they had and have the lowest cost system combined with the world's best airsafety outcomes, but that wasn't good enough for us, we had to have, and have, a vastly more expensive system, with demonstrably worse airsafety outcomes.

Fortunately, the total of Australian GA is little more than a rounding error on the statistics for the North American continent's aviation, so we have little effect on the world wide stats.

The ridiculous misrepresentation of the meaning of "affordable safety" , just for starters, most of you preferred "unaffordable safety", now you are paying the unaffordable cost of unaffordable safety -- with lousy airsafety outcomes to boot.

Airspace wise, you are paying the cost of not having a proper risk managed and cost/benefit justified ( ie; ICAO) airspace management system. Instead, you have demanded and got an inverted system, as the risk decreases, so the CNS/ATM resources applied increase, and you are paying $$$$ for it.

How many of you actively opposed the direction of CASA, in recent years -- effectively opposed, you didn't, and as a result (amongst other things) you are now paying for the monstrous Part 61.

We have a current NPRM Part 132, another piece of gross overkill, applies to Limited Category aircraft --- and the Australian Warbirds Association Ltd. are supporting it --- which is about as smart as turkeys voting for Christmas ( or Thanksgiving if you are a Yank, like the CEO of AWAL ) ---- To roughly quote a former CASA CEO, about 60 odd pages of new crimes, all to solve a non-existent problem ---- this is just another example of the regulatory insanity gripping Australian aviation.

Don't blame Dick Smith, look in a mirror!!

Tootle pip!!

You don't realise just how bad the Oz system is - until you fly in the US, and...

...you don't realise just how bad the UK/JAR/EASA system is - until you fly in Oz.

Now Oz seems to be trying to move to an EASA based system!

In some ways I'm glad I fly in the US now (not pay & benefits) but the system here is a breath of fresh air compared to Oz.

Safety has always been based on 'affordability'. What changes from one era to the next is the perception of what is safe (enough), and what a country is prepared to pay for it. Dick just brought that idea to the forefront.

And, on the topic of affordable safety, just a couple of days ago I had a discussion with a wet-ink pilot on affordable safety. This time the topic was drug & alcohol screening. His position was that even if just one life was saved it's worth it. My counter argument was that - following the same logic - if even one life was saved then all pilots should be provided with instrument ratings and single engine aircraft outlawed. Further, the dollars put to D&A would be more effective if transferred to providing instrument ratings, multi licences & recurrency due to the utterly miniscule number of lives lost that were caused by D&A issues but the much greater loss of life due IMC, system failure & mishandling.

He couldn't see it and opined that both should be done. Never mind he's from Egypt and one reason for learning in the US is price! Talk about mutually exclusive options...

Tinstaafl,
I couldn't agree more, and FAA and the general US system must be doing something right, the air safety outcomes are head and shoulders better than Australia.

It is interesting to compare the approach to a BFR in US ( or NZ) compared to what is now seemingly required for the new Part 61.

In both the US and NZ case, the BFR concentrates on the areas where pilots kill themselves and their passengers, low speed handling, in short, concentrate on the stick and rudder skills --- and in my experience, the average standard of handling skills of a GA pilot in US leaves us for dead --- literally dead, have a looks at the stats.

What do we find here? Instead of 60-90 minutes of attention to the obvious, in AU, have a little practice cross country, where you can do at least one 180, as you turn around to come home. Do a couple of careful "approaches to the stall", but no stalls please, not required, and the instructor may have never done a full and exhaustive stalling exercise --- so he/she is not to happy about the idea. Some "steep turns" --- 35 degrees only please --- that's a steep turn??

In contrast, the US instructor has to be spin and recovery current. And like as not, a good proportion of the BFR will be with the stall warning light/horn on at large angles of bank with lots of power on --- to see if you can fly.

I always love the "some controlled airspace work" --- WTF- I have got many tens of thousands of hours in any class of airspace you can name --- so I need more straight and level practice in controlled airspace.And it is now being treated as a "license renewal", with a pass/ fail, and I rather suspect the likelihood of failure is directly related to the school's budget v. achieved revenue for the month.

No wonder two good mates of mine have recently sold their aircraft and bought yachts.

Tootle pip!!

i retired from aviation in 1990 & have not kept up with the industry until not long ago when i caught up with an old mate who introduced me to this forum.
must say that i am totally gobsmacked by many of the comments on this forum, & of the downward spiral of GA.
to be fair young student enthusiasts are usually so besotted with flying, that the health of an industry & where it's going doesn't even enter their minds.

how many people do actually write to a newspaper 'letters' section on any topic to complain, not many. IMO, individual letters from all over australia about GA flying nowadays & how it's not doing as well as years ago, would carry some weight, though perhaps not as much as a concentrated lobby effort.

personally i believe it's the bureaucracy that's to blame for many ills, i DOT NOT believe that they ought to have a job for life, i think their tenure ought to be linked with their contribution to help any industry go forward, and be able to be removed from their jobs when they are not up to speed.

currently if the government or councils don't want to do anything they can because NO-ONE questions their lack of lateral thinking, stubbornness, not wiliing to listen to industry concerns, general incompetency and sometimes digging their heels in if they don't like someone.
with new ways of dealing with government bureaucrats then any industry ought to be able to flourish.

well anyway that's just my opinion. :)

..and wonderfully quaint it is.

when writing to bureaucrats email is a waste of time, as they can easily be ignored & pretend it got lost in cyberspace.

1. always write a proper LETTER,
2. phone & find out WHO the right person to address it to
3. send through post & pay a little extra for TRACKING service. (don't think the old 'certified mail' where you had to sign to receive your letter exists anymore)

very hard for the receiver to pretend it didn't arrive with tracking. then you can legitimately claim they couldn't be bothered to address your problem or query.

Here's the thing. All phone numbers to government departments are often of the 131 prefix with automated voices at the other end. You will be hard pressed to find a human to talk to who even has access to an internal directory let alone giving you the name and number of any bureaucrat that you can send a letter to. Even within an organisation most contact is through email.

sometimes with automated phone voices & a menu to select from, instead of using their menu, i have just pressed 0 (zero) & it frequently by-passes & takes to a live person.
though I admit it doesn't work 100% of the time.
give it a try.

Just like the live person you may get hold of - it is the government after all.