Gold Coast International Airport CTAF
 

Yesterday (a Friday) at 5 pm peak hour Gold Coast Airport was a CTAF. When i came in, there were a number of Virgin/Jetstar/Qantas flights mixing it up with other aircraft types. When i joined final I was number 4 on final with two Virgin's waiting at the holding point. all trying to sort themselves out on CTAF. Apparently like that again today.. It was due to controllers being on sick/covid leave.

First up, I find the controllers (GC Tower and Bris approach) excellent and i understand it is an Air Services issue, not a Gold Coast Airport issue. But the "safety" irony of the situation is something else. Gold Coast Airport Authority has taken the petty "safety" bureaucracy to the next level. To even visit the office, visitors now need to QR scan in, enter a s...t tonne of details so you can acknowledge you have read and understood the safety plan. (ie...see that big door to your left marked Emergency Exit/) before you can even speak to someone. And don't dare make a remark about it to the receptionist because she seems to have the "Don't make me call security" look always at hand. To access the gate that goes to the private hangars that are literally 25 meters away, you need an ADA card (renewed every 2 yrs), and and a AUA card (2 yrs) in addition to your ASIC. Pretyt much doubling up everything. The security has lately been pinging cars that have not put a yellow flashing light on top to drive those 25 metres....or maybe 150 metres to the far hangars.

Yet at the same time as the serious issue of no flashing light on top of your car is being enforced (because the car itself is obviously invisible) we have 737's/A330's separating themselves from each other and all sort of other traffic. When i came it all ran pretty smoothly with about 10 aircraft on the CTAF freq, but still it is not ideal. Maybe Australia in general needs a few less bureaucrats making everyone's life difficult in the name of "safety", and and a few more people actually on the tools, whatever the profession. The safety bureaucracy just seems to accumulate, the number of steps required to get anything done are added for "safety", and then never removed. And they all take it so seriously, as if there will be a terrorists attack if you have a twinkle in your eye as they take your ID photos. Rant done.

Do NOT get in the way of an Australian and their rules, regs, paperwork, permits and 'security.' If there's anything an Australian loves more than their beer is a good regulation or 10. A permit to scratch your arse.

Don’t forget the approved safety vest, which must be correctly worn airside.

Don’t the $20 million liability insurance for your fifty year old Cessna.

Don’t forget the airport is contactable 24/7, except when we close early every Friday afternoon.

I seem to recall this happened at Melbourne a few years ago and I think it was a Russian aircraft had to circle whilst waiting for an emergency on-call ATC member to arrive as they didn’t know how to operate in a CTAF.

Point of order, good sir. It is no longer just $20,000,000 liability, it is now $35,000,000 - and that's in US DOLLARS too. So what's that? Over $50M AUD with todays exchange rate, should you want to use the Goldy (Or Townsville, Longreach or Mt Isa, - the QAL airports) in your 700-kg Cessna 150...:ugh:

Not sure why you wouldn't want that liability insurance, all that has to happen is a fuel leak sourced from your vehicle that leads to a fire that burns down one or two 737s on the stand and you might be looking pretty shaky without it. Liability has nothing to do with what your asset is worth, its what the possible damage to other assets that could occur or injuries, airports have some pretty big ticket items floating around, I would want a minimum of $20mil liability insurance personally. The reason why some airports require it is that they don't want some poor bastard in his $2 Cessna not being able to pay for damage they caused.

Vehicles are about 1km from any rpt aircraft so would need to be a heck of a fuel leak. Fuel leak anywhere that ignites seems pretty unlikely. Also of course that signing the authority to use airside absolves GCA of any liability. Most insurance is $10m but gca requires $20m plus a clause that says on airport use not excluded. Don't worry...next year they will manage to find more embuggarances. Otherwise what's the point of all the shiny bummed safety people they have. But safety when actually flying at the airport? It's a ctaf mate...arrange it yourself.

Geez! I just landed, parked, slept, fuelled and took off. Nothing in ERSA about this crap.

CTAF procedures for gold coast are in your DAPS. Sure come in at a quiet time all good. But Gold Coast is a busy airport at peak times. Especially compared to Ballina that every rpt driver seems to think is an issue even though its a regional airport. Gold Coast as a ctaf in peak times is far from ideal and I would argue a far bigger safety issue than not reading the evacuation plan each time you visit the office.

But send in a Scoot 787 during CTAF and they will magically pull a tower controller out of their ar$e.

extralite. I think your unedited post was better! :E

All well and good to have a rant, as it’s justified, absolutely. But has anyone contacted CASA? ATSB and put in a confidential (REPCON) report/complaint? The squeaky wheel gets the oil….

F*** M* D*** :rolleyes: :ugh:

43 Inches - yes - some level of insurance, but f&*()ing war risk insurance? Beirut or Kiev yes, but Gold Coast??? I know State of Origin can get heated, but really!

Yeah folks, your Cessna 150 is gunna set fire to 2 x B737's :cool: FFS.............

Your ******* C150 won't get within 3k of a B737 at Gold Coast

All well and good in theory, 43”, but:

• you can’t actually obtain the insurance cover required by Gold Coast, Townsville, Longreach and Mt Isa, and
• the airport operator doesn’t enforce the requirement.

Just goes to show how disconnected from reality the airport operator is. Imposing the insurance requirement and not enforcing it is worse for the airport operator’s potential liability than not imposing the requirement at all.

(And the best insurance against liability is to be worth nothing…)

Yeah war risk insurance at an Australian domestic airport would be a bit of a laugh. But liability is pretty standard on all vehicle insurance contracts most car insurance and home insurance carries liability, if you think $35 mil for a moving object is steep, then why are you paying for $20mil for your static address home. Reason, if a surgeon type on their morning jog happens to trip over your poorly placed letter box and now is disabled and can't complete his 35 years as a Surgeon they might be seeking damages, just the world we live in.

Vehicle is anything that is mechanised and used to transport people or goods including planes, I could use the word conveyance or other more convoluted term if you wish, but I was alluding to any form of transport using the airport, including planes and helicopters, or boat or ship if these floods get worse.

I used the fuel leak analogy as a what if, you could include run-away hand swung prop that bread slices a Gulfstream or just pure landing bounce that ends up in the side of one of those parked jets waiting to take-off injuring the star center for the (insert football team here), or just a passenger happens to walk the wrong way into your taxiing Cessna and loses an arm when you had made a slight err of judgement on which taxiway to follow. None of these things have to happen at all regularly, they just have to be on the Radar of possible occurrences. Most of us are covered by our regular insurance for these things on a daily basis, obviously with the majority of us not knowing it. Airports just have higher risk factors so some might be more inclined to ask for higher coverage so that they are not left as part owners of liability debts.

By the way, read your insurance PDS, cheap insurance are worded very differently to the more expensive brands, esp around things like liability, flooding and fire esp if the result of simple pests like mice and insects.

A good example is rodent damage, expensive insurer "We don't cover damage by pest and rodents except if it is a fire caused by rodent activity" meaning they cover a house burning down due to mice chewing wires. Cheap insurer "we don't cover any damage caused by pests and rodents" meaning if the house burns down due to chewed wires, well you are on your own....

The end result of prior accidents involving pilots with innapropriate levels of insurance, well they get chased out of the country basically as civil cases mount vs them. Its the only option vs owing stupid amounts of money for the rest of your life.

Blimey 43, you live in a different world than me. I just don't give a rat's about any of that. Never have and its served me well. To the best of my knowledge I can lob into any airport in Australia in an un insured bug smasher and not break any rule whatsoever.

That's the reality for 99% of the community, you don't need this stuff, until, well you need it and then if you don't have it it's leave the country stuff. A large company that sees lots of passengers daily and sees risk coming out of every nook at cranny sees things very differently. Liability to large corps is literally a daily issue and the more they can shift the cases to another party the better for them. Think of the supermarket slippers and so on, owning a business that the public interacts with is a risky business financially. You are paying for it in many ways, from increased council rates, to 3rd party coverage on your rego, to everyday components of ticket prices to venues, public transport etc etc.... And the claims are there, every day... so its not invisible risk. Problem is if liability is moved to public avenues, you then pay for it through tax, which way would you prefer to pay? pay to use a service or pay for everyone to have accidents and a universal system..., I know which is cheaper in the long run. By the way liability claims are kept hush as the more public knows what they can claim, the more that fraud the system, and we do see the extremes on TV, but thousands everyday would pass through without much hasel.

BTW if you think I live some scared sheltered life, nope, not even close, I take risks, but calculated and make sure any that come close to the wind are appropriately insured. Whether it's medical insurance for risk taking activities (or daily ones) or the right business insurance for ventures I have undertaken, it prevents you wallowing in debt should the unlikely turn up and hit you hard. For instance my medical insurance has already paid back more than 10 fold what I've paid it, and for goodness sake use it, that's what its for. Good example is skimping on medical insurance as a pilot, then getting medivac from some outback location to a major city, there goes a good chunk of your yearly income without coverage.

Last thing, Cooly airport cares Nowt for you, they want that liability in case you damage something so that you can afford to pay for it, that's it. So it's a one sized stick to cover all occurrences. Once they have told you that you should have this at this airport, the judge deciding on damages will take that into account in what you should be able to afford, insured or not, that becomes a higher risk for the user.

"Leave the country stuff"? You have some very 'interesting' perspectives, 43.

So if I only have $5million liability insurance and do $10million damage, why would I leave the country or who can make me leave the country?

And are you saying you'll be getting the cover required by the operator to use Gold Coast, Townsville, Longreach and Mt Isa? You may have missed the bit where I said you can't actually get it.