[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 27 June 2025

27 June 2025

– Steve Hitchen

Dateline: 23 January 1988, Casey Airfield, Berwick, Victoria. On that day I strapped into VH-RDN with an instructor beside me for my very first encounter with a Cessna 172. Having done all my hours to that point in a C150, the 172 seemed so big! That was the beginning of my relationship with the venerable Skyhawk, and I have flown many variants and individual aircraft since. I suspect my story is not very different from so many pilots out there, except nowadays you're more likely than not to start training in a 172 rather than a 150. With the model turning 70 years old this month, the GA community is reflecting on a machine that–along with the PA28–has provided aviation at all levels with a foundation that could be relied on. It was not the fastest tool in the hangar, but for most of its mission profiles that didn't really matter, and the inception of the current C172SP has solved that problem anyway. Surprisingly, the C172 was first marketed at the business aviation community, but went on to become the mainstay of basic aviation at all levels, and I am sure there are at least 45,000 customers out there who would testify to that. Although they've tried to obsolete the C172 before, Cessna is now married to the idea of continuing with the Skyhawk because the airframe lends itself to new innovation and upgrades so well. And after seven decades, even the older models are sought-after machines. The price of second-hand Skyhawks has skyrocketed, propelled partly through the sticker price of new ones, and partly because they've never surrendered their place in the hearts and minds of the GA community.

"..customer service evaluation can often be collateral damage.."

CASA CEO and Director of Aviation Safety[b] [/b]Pip Spence fronted the RAAA roadshow on the Sunshine Coast last week and outlined the steps the regulator has made in addressing declining service levels. Mostly, CASA is relying on moving functions online to fast-track administrative tasks, hopefully resulting in the bar charts in the satisfaction survey getting a bit taller. But pushing aside vertically-challenged bar charts for a moment, moving functions online is something you would hope CASA would do even if service levels were soaring, because it reflects modern processes and, with luck, returns some money to the aviation community in the form of lower costs. It's the modern way of doing things, but is it enough to create more harmony between the regulator and its stakeholders? Unfortunately, customer service evaluation can often be collateral damage from a wider dissatisfaction with CASA that continues to dog them after 30 years. So, despite genuine efforts to make improvements, it may not show on the scoreboard because of lingering stigma attached to anything CASA. Although an increase in satisfaction is not off the cards, a quantum leap in approval probably is. For that to happen, the GA community would need to extend significant forgiveness, and at the moment service delivery improvement is unlikely to be enough motivation for that to happen. 

In other CASA news, the Class 5 medical standard review is now open for the GA community to submit feedback. Put in place in February 2024, Class 5 is a long-awaited self-declared medical for PPLs and RPLs that CASA implemented with several operational limitations. Those limitations, according to AVMED, were necessary because there are some things that pilots are thought to be unable to assess. And that has caused some significant controversy, not the least because such limitations are not applied to other sectors of aviation that have self-declared medicals, such as recreational aviation and gliding. Other jurisdictions also don't apply this level of operational restriction either. CASA has to fit their regulatory decisions into a risk matrix, and it can often be difficult to lever them out of that, meaning the GA community will have to present its A game to have some of these limitations relaxed. But I am getting the impression that CASA can be moved if the feedback is strong enough and well presented; no object is completely immovable if the force is genuinely irresistible. So, GA, now is not the time for apathy, now is the time to lick the pencil and get writing. 

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 4 July 2025

4 July 2025

– Steve Hitchen

Aviation globally has now entered the gravitational pull of Oshkosh. This is the period leading up to EAA Airventure where all aviation companies go quiet in terms of news, saving their key crowd-pulling announcements of Oshkosh itself. We get nothing until Airventure starts, then a mad flurry over the week of Oshkosh. But this year, there really is only one announcement that people are aching for: MOSAIC. Unfortunately, the mail is that it won't come ... again. This is the long-awaited modification of the rules surrounding LSAs, which will expand the definition, remove the arbitrary MTOW and permit new technology not imagined when the first LSA standard was written. The FAA is yet to finalise the new regs, and the general aviation community is watching nervously, knowing that the legislative deadline for doing so is November this year. After that, the whole rule-writing process goes back to square one without passing Go. On the Good News side of the ledger, the FAA is expecting to get this done in August or September; too late for Oshkosh, but before the deadline. I think even the FAA would have liked to have made the announcement at Oshkosh because it would garner them some good, positive PR in front of the global aviation world. The GA community has waited long enough for this ruleset; a few more weeks won't hurt, but if if goes out longer than that, the nervousness running through the industry will go off the scale.

"..We may as well demand they fly between the pastry layers on a vanilla slice!.."

Whilst we have known for a few years that Western Sydney International would completely swamp the Class G airspace around Sydney, it was not until last week that we got our first harbinger of how bad it was really going to be. Despite the preliminary airspace design published in December 2023 leaving the Class C LL at 2500, Airservices has lowered that level over GA like unwelcome overcast, driving student pilots out of Bankstown down to 1500 feet AMSL, and perhaps driving yet another nail into that airport's coffin. With the 2RN towers stretching up to 800 feet, a requirement to clear that by 500 feet and a practice of staying at least 100 feet below CTA steps, students have only 100 feet through which to thread their aircraft. We may as well demand they fly between the pastry layers on a vanilla slice! Airservices has said the 1500-foot CLL will simplify controlled airspace, which is true for Airservices staff and the airlines, but adds complexity to GA and reduces safety significantly. Students will probably have no option in some cases but to violate controlled airspace. I also expect this will seriously impact the gliding operators at Camden. All this doesn't actually have to happen; so far this is a proposal only and has to go to the Office of Airspace Regulation, who will be distributing it to the GA community for comment. That same community responded so viscerally to the south-eastern corridor concept that CASA withdrew the idea. I expect a similar reaction to this new CLL, placing the OAR in a tight spot of its own.

AAHOF announced four new inductees during the week, each one very worthy of the honour. The impact Ivan Holyman and Billy Hart had on the pioneering decades of aviation laid the foundation for our civil air transport network today. In the cases of both, they believed and they delivered, and deserved to be recognised for that. Bill Bristow also believed, and set up a legacy in Angel Flight that provides a service to thousands of people who otherwise would need to endure long, arduous road trips just to get to medical appointments. His AM is testimony to what he achieved. The great unsung hero among the four is Greg Dunstone. An Airservices engineer who was dogged in his dedication to ADS-B, Dunstone was the driving force behind Australia adopting the new–but not necessarily applauded–surveillance technology. At the time we all hated the idea, but that was a cost thing particularly in the absence of any subsidies. Time has proven the technology, showing that Dunstone's passion for it was well placed. The AAHOF dinner is next year to coincide in time and place with Airshows Downunder Shellharbour, setting up a great aviation weekend that should find a place on many a calendar.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

[Peetwo]

The Last Minute Hitch: 11 July 2025

11 July 2025

– Steve Hitchen

Opponents of the new Class D CTR at Ballina will be relieved to be given an extra seven months of ATC-free flying. The new tower was to have gone live in November, but apparently Airservices are having trouble with some location issues and the tower has been pushed out until 11 June 2026: one year today. It goes to show you that some things are easier said than done. This extra delay–presuming none further–means that it will be 11 years since the alarms first rang on the need to do something about traffic at Ballina-Byron. It was July 2015 when the Office of Airspace Regulation (OAR) recommended solving the problem with a CA/GRS, which was probably always going to be a MacGyvered solution anyway. This project has been one of the most controversial changes to airspace in the past decade, and has many detractors, but given there is no way of stopping it nor getting a better outcome for GA, we need this in place soonest so we can stop talking about it.

"..Airservices needs to switch their thinking.."

More than ever before, the aviation community needs to weigh in on the Sydney airspace consultation because this is likely to be the last chance we'll get to inject some sensible comment into the debate. The latest rising issue from the industry briefing paper is that of dynamic airspace; airspace that changes levels with the time of day. Sharp-eyed commentators noticed on the draft VTC that the CLL over Camden is marked as 1500 on the main chart, but 4500 on the inset. Surely an error? No. In fact, they're both right. Airservices told me the idea is that the CLL is 4500 for most of the day, but will drop to 1500 when the Sydney Airport curfew is in effect between 2300 and 0530. This means that when there are fewer aeroplanes in the sky, the volume of CTA actually increases. I believe Airservices has done this to enable flights ex WSA to depart overhead Camden rather than overhead Penrith during the night. The CLL needs to drop to keep them in CTA. The crux is that political promises about noise over Penrith need to be honoured despite the impact on general aviation. But if we're stuck with it, Airservices needs to switch their thinking. The 4500 CLL should be on the main chart because a VTC is unlikely to be used between 2300 and 0530. It will be the chart of choice for daylight hours, which really makes marking the 1500 CLL on the main chart completely redundant except for the few NVFR flights coming into Camden or Bankstown. And it's going to challenge the EFB designers, who are faced with the task of having to deal with VTCs that show two different levels. We have been given a lot to think about, and Airservices needs to be told that.

I have recurring themes in what I write; things I sporadically return to because the represent some form of unfulfilled wish or a wound that refuses to be salved. One of those is that I believe private aircraft owners are Australia's greatest untapped resource. Skills, capacity and capability lie dormant and come to life only when the call goes out from an organisation like Angel Flight or FunFlight. I was reading today about Operation Airdrop, a relief organisation in the USA that mobilises private owners in times of natural disaster, flying tonnes of food and materials into impacted areas. They're all volunteers, and by the look of things get the boots on the ground where they are needed faster than government organisations can. Their most recent deployment has been to the Texas flood zone. It reminds me of Mallacoota in 2019-20, when the ADF closed the airspace around the town and chartered flights to bring in food, clothes, life essentials and everything needed to sustain an isolated town. Using volunteer private aircraft owners flying for the cost of the avgas could have shifted a lot more in a shorter time at a lower cost. Our problem over here is that our private pilots are considered unskilled and inefficient, to be shunned in times of need rather than embraced. As long as the government continues with that attitude, a valuable resource will continue to be wasted. Have a look at Operation Airdrop on their website.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch