[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 14 February 2025

14 February 2025

– Steve Hitchen

In a Federal Election year, a ream of funding announcements generally marks the starting gun to a serious pitch by the government to stay in power. Not that grants aren't given out regularly during the course of a government's term, just that they take on strategic meaning. Sometimes that strategy is not so clear. This week minister Catherine King released successful projects for the fourth round of the Regional Airports Program (RAP), but only for NSW. When questioned about it, the department spokesperson said further announcements were yet to be made, like I needed to have that pointed out. The department release included quotes from the minister, and from the sitting members for Gilmore (Moruya) and Eden-Monaro (Merimbula). Missing was any form of quote from the federal member for Farrar, a seat which includes Albury, Narrandera and Griffith. Farrar was plied with the most money of any NSW electorate. Gilmore and Eden-Monaro are Labor seats; Farrar is Liberal. Let's not give air time to the opposition, especially with an election so close. The muddiness comes in why NSW has been singled out for a special announcement unaccompanied by a list of grants for other states. I suspect it is attached to an electoral strategy to shore up support in that state. If that's correct, we may see further funding announcements as the election bandwagon rolls across other state borders.

"..GA is being ordered to make extinction-level sacrifice.."

Consultation and commonsense have tag-teamed CASA into scrapping the Bankstown Corridor idea. The design would have funnel training traffic into a corridor with a narrow girth and a ceiling lower than a POWs tunnel. That bought about a clear rejection from the aviation community, and CASA has taken that on board and binned the concept as published. Now, some aviation commentators are asking "why was CASA so stupid to design something so dangerous is the first place?" I can answer that: they didn't have a lot of say in the matter. The ALP needed to appease the Western Sydney International deity, and threw copious amounts of GA airspace into the volcano to do so, despite being told at blueprint stage that Bankstown would be strangled. Consequently, CASA's Office of Airspace Regulation is trying to come up with an airspace design that will allow Bankstown to breathe without compromising safety. The last one was bound to decrease safety in the Sydney basin, so tearing it up was actually the safest thing to do. But OAR is still working with the same raw materials, but now are expected to come up with a better idea mid year. If a better idea existed, they would have put that forward for consultation last year and not the design they did. WSA needs airspace, and that airspace has to come from somewhere else. At the moment, GA is being ordered to make extinction-level sacrifice whereas other airspace users in the Sydney basin like the ADF and Sydney International have surrendered little. A total re-think is needed for the OAR to come up with an inspired alternative, and that may mean having some harsh words with other airspace users.

It makes logical sense for AAHOF to schedule the induction dinner to coincide with Airshows Downunder Shellharbour. The air show will already draw a lot of people from all sectors of aviation to Shellharbour Airport, and holding the dinner at the same time will add some lustre to AAHOF, and further cement Shellharbour as a key hub for the aviation community. There will already be many in the aviation community at Shellharbour for the air show, so the AAHOF induction won't demand from them two separate trips for each event. Add to that, it will give people somewhere to go on the Saturday night that keeps them immersed in aviation rather than dispersing at the end of the day for dinner at a nearby pub or restaurant. On the years that ASDU is not held, scheduling the dinner will be trickier to ensure it doesn't foul the Avalon calendar. That shouldn't be too hard to do given that AAHOF and AMDA Foundation, which runs Avalon, have directors in common. And whilst we're on the subject: AAHOF hasn't any nominations for the Southern Cross Award yet. There is a lot of satisfaction in having your organisation permanently honoured alongside Qantas, RAAF, RFDS and other names luminous in the annals of Australian aviation. We should know; Australian Flying was so honoured in 2023. Get onto the AAHOF website and tell them right now why your organisation should have its space.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 21 February 2025

21 February 2025

– Steve Hitchen

One of the hottest topics around the GA precincts of Avalon 2009 was the collapse the previous year of the Helicopter Association of Australia (HAA). There was plenty of speculation and opinion whipping around the exhibition about the whys and whats that deprived a growing industry of a collective voice. Four years later a new association rose, and continues to rise. The Australian Helicopter Industry Association (AHIA) is now one of the premier associations in general aviation, as evidenced by the respect they hold in Canberra, the momentum behind their biennial convention at RotorTech and the safety programs they promote. Associations are membership-based, but that doesn't absolve them from the responsibility of creating a product the market wants. That usually means getting the mix right and positioning the organisation at the very top of the expertise tree. AHIA has done a fantastic job of doing just that, and is now an association the helicopter industry, regulators and politicians can rely on. Other associations wondering where they are going could use AHIA as a template on how to get it right.

"..the coroner is not talking about criminal charges over the pilot being issued his RPC.."

The Victorian coroner's report into the Lucyvale Jabiru crash has not done any favours to the recreational aviation community. Unfortunately, that's not the coroner's fault; this one is an own-goal. The bombshell in the findings is that key people at RAAus have been referred to the Victorian Department of Prosecutions for potentially providing misleading evidence to the court. That's important to note that the coroner is not talking about criminal charges over the pilot being issued his RPC, just the way RAAus management dealt with giving evidence at the coronial inquiry. However, it would seem the pathway is open for the family to bring a civil case against RAAus, which has generated chatter around the community that a payout could break the organisation. I doubt it; it's because we humans are fallible and make mistakes that we have insurance. If the cover doesn't protect against something like this then what is the point of insurance? For me the worrying thing is the path RAAus management elected to take after realising they were exposed. I was once told that when it comes to a bureaucracy and a choice between a conspiracy and a monumental stuff-up, go for the stuff-up every time. So far, that has held true, and I am prepared to extend that to RAAus as well, but this incident is borderline. That's scary coming from a management team that holds the health of recreational aviation in their own hands. I can't see the membership being impressed by all this, and demands to do better are probably not misplaced.

Australian Flying's owner and publishing company Yaffa Media is 100 years old this year. For any commercial organisation to reach its centenary is a huge effort, and a credit to the Yaffa family, which still owns the business set up in 1925. Remarkably, Australian Flying has been in the Yaffa stable for 56 of those years. They bought the title as a stapled newsletter and developed it into a full-colour glossy magazine, complemented with an online presence. Other magazines such as Aircraft and Aerospace, Aviation Business and Flightpath also briefly flourished, but have since folded their wings as print publications came under pressure from the digital age. We're still here because the Yaffa family never lost faith that Australian Flying was delivering a product that perfectly matched the desires of the customer base. Whilst the last 10 have seen no less than eight aviation titles cease publication in Australia, we've never lost focus on what the GA community wants, and that is primarily a hard-copy print magazine. It hasn't been easy; there have been moments, but the Yaffa family has ridden every peak and trough of troubled waters. Ultimately, knowing how to do that is how you get to be 100 years old.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 28 February 2025

28 February 2025

– Steve Hitchen

I can still remember the rampant enthusiasm for Ausfly when it was first proposed by CASA's Peter John at the SAAA convention in 2011. An event unifying GA seemed to be just what was needed to breathe life into a GA community that at the time was flagging under the woes of economic and regulatory burden. The SAAA leapt on board and initially recruited other associations to put in, making it a truly industry-wide undertaking. Now, the only GA association with claims to Ausfly is the SAAA; all others having dropped off over the years. To be blunt: politics and vested interest got in the way. I am going to have to parrot myself here: fly-ins are only ever as good as the people that go to them, and for mystifying reasons, Ausfly has not grown at a rate that it should have. Ausfly 2025 will feature the Silver Sharks, the Screaming Diamonds and Freedom Formation, three very skilled and entertaining teams doing their best to excite the Sunraysia community about general aviation. This is bound to generate some enthusiasm for GA, and it would be fantastic for as many GA people as possible to get up to Wentworth in two weeks time and bolster the energy on show.

"..should I feel like wagering a few dollars, I would put it on SAF-burning diesels.."

Electric propulsion is proving to be a difficult child for aviation, hampered by battery technology and certification requirements that currently make it largely unviable at the moment. Companies like magniX and ZeroAvia are making great leaps forward, but this week it got all too much for Eviation's twin-engined Alice commuter, which has been temporarily exiled from Wonderland. The company is sitting on orders for 600 airframes worth $US5 billion, but still finds the development piggybank bare. To be fair, general aviation has a history of soaking up eye-crossing dollars in development to produce very little; think very-light jets, think Spruce Goose, think Beech Starship. But each of those was a great idea rather than an imperative. The Australian government has declared electric aviation to be the future of GA, meaning GA's future is now more uncertain than it has ever been. They have declared electric powerplants to be an imperative. That's got the frighteners running through the GA community, and they'll keep going until someone proves the technology viable and practical. Right now, the head-shaking sceptics are winning, turning their energy hopes wistfully towards running unleaded avgas, or SAF in diesel engines. But even those technologies have teething problems: unleaded avgas brings fears of engine damage, and diesel engine manufacturers are still testing SAF in their products. In sum, GA's foundation for the future has no keystone at this stage. However, should I feel like wagering a few dollars, I will put it on SAF-burning diesels being available long before practical electric motors, and the Australian government needs to be prepared for that.

There is now less than a month between us and the Australian International Airshow; Avalon 2025. It's aviation's biggest party, but sometimes is still not seen as an event for general aviation. That is probably because GA doesn't get much of a go on the big stage in front of the crowd; some aerobats, gliders and antiques landing on trucks has historically been the limit. However, the organiser AMDA Foundation has a charter to promote aviation at all levels, and the GA community is too quick to forget that many GA organisations have a presence at Avalon free of charge. If you wander around the GA precinct, you will be looking at aeroplanes that stand on free ground, with temporary infrastructure stumped-up by AMDA Foundation. That's a fairly considerable contribution, and it reflects AMDA's increasing involvement in GA that is also evidenced by them taking over Wings over Illawarra, funding Fly'n for Fun and staging RotorTech. There seems to be an increasing awareness at AMDA of the importance of GA in Australia and that they have a role in developing our industry and community. Putting GA in front of the general public at Avalon is a very effective way of doing that.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 7 March 2025

7 March 2025

– Steve Hitchen 

Although most of Australia will experience mixed flying weather this weekend, we need to spare a thought for aviators in south-east Queensland, who are about to be slammed pretty heavily by Cyclone Alfred. Current predictions are that it will cross the coast tomorrow morning centred just north of Brisbane. The danger area runs from Double Island Point to Grafton, with airports ike Gympie, Caloundra, Caboolture, Redcliffe, Archerfield, Southport, Watts Bridge and all the way down to Ballina Byron in Alfred's sights. Wind up to 70 kt are on the cards; rainfall on Saturday could be up to 250 mm. Traditionally, GA fares poorly in flooding and very high winds, so aviators should be canceling flying plans and instead doing everything they can to protect aircraft. The rest of the country can do nothing but wish them the best, then as always, help pick up the pieces later on. Hang in there, SEQ, the rest of Australia is with you.

"..Warnervale has the potential to become a major airport in Sydney's north.."

News that Central Coast Council is to proceed with a master plan for Warnervale Airport has been greeted in the GA community like a sore wound has finally healed. Airport operators–particularly Central Coast Aero Club–has been biting its nails for several years as elements within the council have tried a number of nefarious ways to have the airport cease operations. They've tried it all from stopping trees being pruned to clandestinely shortening the runway. All this time CCAC, which has freehold land with access to the airside, has been jammed in limbo because they had no security of future. Now, with the master plan set to go ahead, Warnervale has the potential to become a major airport in Sydney's north capable of taking refugees from a WSA-plagued Bankstown. But the shine on the diamond is not as lustrous as it could be. The council vote to adopt the plan was 8-7, meaning only one councillor would have to be turned for the master plan to be binned. Although this is a tenuous margin, it is one that operators on many municipal airports around Australia would love to have. For them, anti-airport factions still rule the roost, doing their best to stifle airport development and movements so they can justify converting the airport into housing and industrial estates. This, no doubt, would have been Warnervale's fate had the wind not changed in the council chambers. Hopefully, GA is able to hold up Warnervale as an example to other airport-owning councils of how an airport can be leveraged as an asset and not denigrated as a liability.

For those old enough to remember the grainy black-and-white images of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 (often referred to as "the moonwalk" even though there were another five of those), it's amazing that we have reached a point in history where there are only four people left alive who set foot on another celestial body. One of those, Apollo 16 LM pilot Charles M. Duke, is coming out here for Avalon this year. Most Australians will not have heard of Duke; you need to be an Apollo devotee to be able to name any Apollo astronaut not on Apollo 11. Duke, Buzz Aldrin, Dave Scott and Harrison Schmitt will be hoping they are able to swell the ranks of the living moonwalkers club soon, when NASA's Artemis program returns people to the moon after an absence of more than half a century. How poignant would it be for the pioneers of Apollo to be able to personally greet the new generation of Artemis moonwalkers? All things going well, that's something we can look forward to.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 13 March 2025

13 March 2025



There has been no disturbance in The Force, nor a rip in the space-time continuum; LMH has indeed arrived on a Thursday. That's because the Yaffa Media clan has gathered in Sydney to celebrate the company centenary, marked with a soiree tonight and a day off work tomorrow. We'll probably need it. With the FAA certifying GE Aerospace's Catalyst turbine, the way is now open for Textron Aviation to get the Beechcraft Denali SETP to market. When Textron announced the Denali (originally to be branded Cessna), it surprised the GA community world-wide that the manufacturer pushed aside the faithful PT6 engines that were proving match winners in the Caravan and King Air ranges, opting for an engine that not only was untried, but at the time didn't even exist. The quality of that decision isn't clear at the moment; the pairing of Catalyst and Denali needs some miles under its belt before we know that. However, Textron needed a strong point of differentiation between the Denali and the Pilatus PC-12, which, to the market, looked like the same airframe. It wasn't going to be enough to use a different engine; that engine needed to leap the P&W offering by a significant margin. If they are right, will subsequent models of the Caravan and King Air come out with Catalyst options? The Denali is scheduled for certification this year, after that we'll start to get our first clues whether or not Textron has made a quantum leap into a new generation of SETP.

"..The Class 5 PIR will rely heavily on good feedback.."

The post-implementation review (PIR) of the Class 5 medical standard is underway, and CASA has said it will include a survey to round-up feedback from the general aviation community. This is all part of what is nowadays a robust consultation process. But consultation is often only as good as the information supplied. If you look through the published feedback on any number of consultations, you will find feedback that can be triaged into one of three categories: good, bad or ugly. Good feedback is fact-based and well argued, bad feedback generally contains errors of fact or is badly stated, ugly feedback is bad feedback laced with vitriol. The Class 5 PIR will rely heavily on good feedback and anything other than that will be set aside. That's because self-assessed medicals are an area in which CASA has feared to tread for years, and AVMED is a bit nervous about it. What they don't need right now, and will be on the alert for, is people gaming the system and being dishonest. CASA loves risk mitigators, and if they think that pilots are taking them for a ride, they are unlikely to surrender the risk mitigators they have applied: the operational restrictions. So when you send in your feedback, make sure CASA can place it in the "good" file rather than any of the other two. Keep in mind also that a lot of what they collect will be used to inform the Class 4 medical as well.

Election years are always a fun time in aviation because politicians on both sides of parliament hate it when the word "aviation" starts to appear in headlines. It scares them. The result of that fear is increased leverage for aviation advocates. This year, there is something in the wind about the leased metro airports. In past years, master plans have breezed through the approval process in Canberra, but that's been a tough path to walk for the airport operators recently. In November, the minister wrote to the operators outlining what they intend to do to protect aviation. It sounded great and was soothing to the GA community. Words. Whilst words are the weapons of the political species, they often aren't enough. In the past few weeks there have been rumblings from organisations on the leased airports that they are being threatened with bulldozers. Those threats are coming in the form of short leases being offered. History shows that when short leases are offered, it's because the airport operator has other plans for the ground they stand on. What other plans could they have than using it for aviation? To not do so is surely a breach of the head leases, and represents a raspberry blown in the direction of the minister. I am hoping to run this down more next week before heading to Avalon. 

Speaking of elections, about this time every election year, I hit-up the incumbent government for its aviation policy. I won't be bothering with the ALP this year; they will only point to the White Paper and tell me to read that. I will, however, be putting the acid on the Coalition to see what they've got for us. At the time of writing, we don't know the exact election date, but calendar-crunchers around the country are zeroing in on 17 May. That is actually the last day that an election can be held, and possibly the Saturday of choice because it gives the ALP more time to recover their popularity from the stalled condition it's in. Once Albo fires the starter's gun, I'll be writing to the Coalition to try to extract their thoughts about aviation, and encouraging the GA associations to let us know their thoughts in the form of policy papers.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Sandy Reith]

The Class 5 ‘PIR’ will spend much time and effort considering the opinions of themselves and will certainly overlook facts such as 31 years of successful RAAUS low weight category self declared medicals, similarly in excess of 70 years of GFA ops, including that they have been flying in CTA with never a medical problem.

Then there’s all the stats from the USA all of which show conclusively, like it or not, that there’s zero evidence that aviation specific medicals have any relevance to the safety of civil aviation, any more than would an aviation type medical certification system if applied to private motor car drivers.

And as far as making “ good” submissions to avoid your best thoughts being binned at the outset by the CASA make work industry, quite so.
Be awfully polite and realise that CASA people have feelings too, be nice. And don’t mention all the other CASA mess ups like Glen Buckley, whatever you do.

By the way how clever was it to create the C5 with a weight limit of 2000kg? They didn’t bother to go downstairs to their registration people to see how that would sit. Early C337 in, later models out. Same with the Piper Seneca, or TravelAir in but Baron out. Plain stupid, not to mention not allowed IFR because, as I was told by a senior CASA manager, IFR is too difficult.
He was a former GA pilot, or so he told me.

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 21 March 2025

21 March 2025

– Steve Hitchen

Jabiru Aircraft is on the march, it would seem, as new management looks to the future of recreational aviation in Australia. Having endured engine troubles in the mid 20-teens, the company has made some future-proofing moves capitalising on some competitive advantages. Firstly, they had to restore faith in their engine reliability, which they have done with the Gen4 engines. Whether you agreed or disagreed with the reliability issues that caused CASA to apply restrictions, it was a PR disaster for them. New Executive Director Mick Halloran has come out upwind of Avalon and announced a determination for improvement that also included a concession about the past woes. Secondly, the new MOSAIC rules are actually playing catch-up with Jabiru, who tested the J230 airframe to a 760-kg MTOW from the outset. All they have been waiting for is a category to which they could certify it. The same goes for the J432 twin; a great idea looking for a design standard. Both the new aircraft are due to be on the stand at Avalon this week, and it will be interesting to see if they are as impressive as they seem on paper.

 "..ambitions like fleet renewal have to take a backseat to simple survival.."

RAAA's new policy paper is, as expected, a slick, professional presentation laden with commonsense that the ALP government would do well to heed. RAAA papers in the past have warned that regional aviation is hanging on by a very frayed thread, the foresight of which has been proven with the REX collapse. It's looking increasingly likely that the Federal Government will be back in the airline business by 1 July this year, having been forced to take a majority shareholding in the embattled regional carrier. It won't take them long to realise just how precarious the industry footing really is – if they haven't already. Minister King will soon understand the importance of the RAAA policy and its veracity, but will there be the political courage to turn those words into actions? There hasn't been much of that in the past from either side of the house, despite the new White Paper sporting the appearance of great concern. Will REX be a skakubuku, a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters their reality? Their reality is currently an expectation that regional aviation is important to Australia and will need to contribute to the net-zero campaign by investing eye-crossing dollars in new technology without financial incentives. Regional airlines and charter operators just want the doors to still be open next month and ambitions like fleet renewal have to take a backseat to simple survival. If the collapse of REX isn't a shakubuku, then this RAAA policy paper should be.

Every time I walk through the gates on Day 1 of an Australian International Airshow, I get a strong sense of "We're on again!" I unashamedly love Avalon and this year I get to walk through those gates for the 16th time. Where the excitement comes from is a thought that I might be exposed to something new, interesting and engrossing. Some Avalons you get that; others seem like an echo of previous air shows. Avalon 2025 does promise to be different from the others, which in ways has the aviation community feeling a certain nervousness. Avalon 2023 was almost universally hailed as the best ever. That could be a residue from the COVID shackles being released; shackles that restrained Avalon 2021 to the point of cancelation, or it could be because the formula for the show was one that just clicked. What has the aviation community frowning is whether or not those differences are going to be improvements, or just differences. Naturally, the euphoria that surrounded Avalon 2023 was always going to put pressure on AMDA to repeat that success this year, making what is already a mind-blowing task even harder. Whether or not Avalon 2025 will rise to the occasion is a question that we should be able to answer in the first week of April, but its not a question that I will allow to spoil my moment walking through the gates on Tuesday.

And a final shout-out to Group Captain John "Paddy" Hemingway, who died this week aged 105. Paddy was the last surviving pilot who flew in the Battle of Britain in 1940. As a 19-year-old Irishman, Paddy had also flown in the Battle of France before joining the retreat to the UK. He was shot down once in France, twice over the English Channel and a fourth time near Ravenna, Italy, in 1945. During the Battle of Britain he flew Hurricanes with 85 Squadron under the legendary Peter Townsend. He was the last of Winston Churchill's "Few" to which so much was owed. Well flown, Paddy Hemingway.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch