[Peetwo]

AOPA Oz 'Dead, Buried & Cremated??' - UP thread.

Via the UP thread link:

#post 26

girl with a stick

I've worked for AOPA twice.

Once under the Phillip Reiss / Andrew Anderson years, as editor of their mag. It was a time of decline, but the directors were committed to their roles. There were around 3000 members and they received a printed magazine 6 times a year. Unfortunately, poor office management caused me and others to depart. There was a bit of a scandal, and the CEO at the time left hastily.

The second time was under Ben Morgan, as one of 5 digital editors. BM's enthusiasm brought me back, but after begging to be paid one too many times, I, and the other editors, left en masse.

I realise I have a skewed POV here as a magazine editor, but when they stopped putting out a members' mag, membership dropped off really quickly. For the price of the subs, members feel they need something tangible, in addition to advocacy. Now, it seems no one is handling their comms, other than BM on FB. The website is dead, the bus is dead and their reputation hasn't really recovered from scandal after scandal.

The Royal Federation of Aero Clubs has stepped up to fill a much-needed advocacy role, and Lachlan Hyde is doing a stellar job.

As this thread demonstrates, many members have been burnt by AOPA. I think their only hope is fresh blood, a solid marketing strategy, and a collaborative approach to appealing to new members who are already burdened by aviation costs.

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Clinton McKenzie

The silence from AOPA Australia in response to this thread speaks volumes.

I have had numerous conversations with various people about resurrecting AOPA Australia. The conversation quickly moves to a simple question from me: Who is AOPA’s target constituency in 202X?

There’s been an exodus of private pilots away from ‘traditional’ GA and into RAAus, and CASA has now been captured by RAAus. The RAAus constituency is therefore doing very nicely, thank you very much, and doesn’t need representation from AOPA or anyone else.

Australian Ag Operators have their own and effective Association. Ditto the helicopter industry. Ditto many of the larger aero clubs. SAAA, RVAA, etc, etc. The airlines run their own races. The RAAA is a seriously professional body.

It would be great if they all got together and spoke with one voice along with ordinary private pilots and aircraft owners, but they have different and sometimes conflicting interests. And even if they were willing to get together and speak with one voice, I doubt it would be through AOPA Australia unless it was headed up by a latter-day Chuck Yeager or Neil Armstrong.

I doubt whether AOPA Australia has more than a few hundred members left who pay annual membership fees. I doubt whether any of the current directors would be willing to make a statutory declaration as to how many members who pay annual memberships fees are actually left. But I’m happy to stand corrected.

I have acquaintances who paid for life membership but haven’t been invited to an Annual General Meeting in years. And then there’s the minor point that ‘paid for’ life membership is not a kind of membership permitted by AOPA Australia’s Articles of Association. The Life Membership Article (10) says: “Any member or any other person who the Committee desire to honour with such distinction may without payment be admitted by a resolution of the Committee to be a Life Member. Life Members will be entitled to exercise all the rights and privileges as ordinary financial members.”

Life Memberships of AOPA Australia are supposed to be reserved for the outstanding few who’ve gone ‘above and beyond’ for decades. Dick Smith would be a typical example. And the distinguished few who earn Life Membership of AOPA Australia don’t have to pay membership fees.

Selling a membership category that does not exist, for $2,599, then ghosting those ‘life’ members is the kind of thing that tends to happen when a majority of directors of a public company practically abdicate their duties and obligations under the Corporations Law and Articles of Association to an unelected employee who’s supported and protected in doing whatever that individual chooses to do and not to do, when and how the individual chooses.

Perhaps AOPA Australia could make money to fund a resurrection by taking deposits on a gold smartphone, named e.g. the "AOPA Oz Mobile B1"?

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Flyer517

Even taking into account the organisational issues AOPA Australia has experienced, is the problem simply that there are not enough people in the country involved in aviation to support more than 1 organisation to represent them? From what is written above, it seems that RAAus has basically supplanted the role of AOPA and it is just a branding matter.

To expect a population as small as Australia to support an organisation representing such a niche pastime to the same extent that AOPA in the US can manage seems unrealistic. Even the US version is losing members if Google is to be believed.

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Clinton McKenzie

The 'critical mass' factor is significant but I don't think it's what caused the erosion in AOPA Australia's natural constituency. To me it's more that the critical mass of non-heavy metal airline aviation activity in Australia is now spread across many more, separate interest groups.

When I joined AOPA in the mid-80s, much of what was then called "GA" - 'most' of civil aviation other than heavy metal airlines - was AOPA's natural constituency. Flying schools, small charter operators, ag operators etc, CPLs, student pilots and private pilots owned or flew a very large chunk of the non-heavy metal airline aircraft fleet in Australia. All of those pilots had to have CAA/CASA-issued licences and medical certificates. All those aircraft had to have CAA/CASA-issued certificates of airworthiness and Flight Manuals. In a practical sense, most of the non-heavy metal aircraft owners, operators, pilots and maintainers were 'all in the same regulatory boat'. (As I recall, back then AUF (the predecessor to RAAus) operations were not permitted to cross a sealed road. No drone operators, of course. The gliding fraternity have always run their well-oiled operational machine their way and had and continue to have their own federation/organisation.)

There's a much greater diversity of interests, now, some of them conflicting. For example, there are now thousands of pilots who don't have a CASA-issued licence, don't have a CASA issued-medical certificate and fly aircraft that don't have a CASA-issued certificate of airworthiness. And those pilots and aircraft are allowed to mix it with even heavy metal airline aircraft operations at some aerodromes. Those pilots and the owners of those aircraft don't want anything from CASA - other than ever-increasing airspace access and higher MTOWs and stall speeds - and rarely-if-ever get into direct stoushes with CASA so don't need representation from an organisation like AOPA any more. I'm on the Board of the Colour Vision Defective Pilot Association. We fight our own fights against CASA now, with AOPA nowhere to be seen or heard. 'Back in the day' the veteran of those fights - Dr Arthur Pape - was for a time an AOPA Board member!

Covid didn't help.

Whatever the external factors at play, AOPA still had to be governed properly, in accordance with the rules. That might - I'm speculating - have resulted in a little more introspection and focus on strategic planning for a 'reinvented' organisation. It would be tragic if it's too late to be resuscitated.

MTF...P2