[thorn bird]

From News.com.au

THE argument for city folk to relocate to Australia’s regional towns and cities is not a completely ridiculous one.
Compared to the capitals their property prices look almost affordable, land blocks are huge and the health and mental benefits of that clean country air go alright as well.
But there’s one crucial element that’s always left out of this discussion — access.
Getting in and out of Australia’s smaller cities is not only a time-consuming pain, it’s bloody expensive.
A Q & A audience members gained a round of applause when he pointed this out at an Alice Springs filming of the ABC program last night.
The man said he and his wife had booked their honeymoon next month and it was costing more to fly from Alice Springs to Adelaide, return, that it was to get from Adelaide to Croatia and back.
“Tourism would be higher and more people would live in Alice Springs if the prices weren’t so expensive,” he said.
At the time of publishing, the cost of the next available flight from Sydney to Alice Springs was at $711, whereas Sydney to Adelaide was as cheap as $158.
If you were to plan ahead, as the airlines recommend, flights to Adelaide were similarly priced, about $175 to $250, but the trip to Alice Springs was just below the $700 mark.
The Hilltop Hoods at Alice Springs Airport ahead of their gig this weekend ... Picture: PHIL WILLIAMS
The Hilltop Hoods at Alice Springs Airport ahead of their gig this weekend ... Picture: PHIL WILLIAMSSource:News Corp Australia
Chair of Tourism Central Australia Dale McIver didn’t argue with the questioner, saying she had sat down with the two major airlines that fly to the remote Northern Territory town, and said their explanations didn’t suitably justify the high prices.
“We have locals here in Alice Springs that will drive 450km from Alice Springs to Uluru to get a cheaper flight.”
Territorian MP Warren Snowdon said the explanation was “pretty simple”.
“Price gouging” he said. “We don’t have control over those airlines. They make their choices. They make the decisions. They know they’ve got a captive market. So they milk us.”
In Western Australia, the high costs of flights to regional airports has made such an impact a parliamentary inquiry has recently committed to investigate the issue.
WA Tourism Minister Paul Papalia said the committee had the power to “get to the bottom of why these fares are so expensive and give airlines the opportunity to provide solutions”.
The question over the huge cost of flying to regional Australia also captured the attention of One Nation leader Pauline Hanson earlier this year.
Pauline Hanson said local landing fees where to blame when she tried to explain "regional aviation economics" to her Facebook followers in April. Picture: Pauline Hanson's Please Explain/Facebook
Pauline Hanson said local landing fees where to blame when she tried to explain "regional aviation economics" to her Facebook followers in April. Picture: Pauline Hanson's Please Explain/FacebookSource:Facebook
In a lengthy Facebook post and accompanying video, Senator Hanson’s explainer of “regional aviation economics” said costs were driven by demand, competition and the cost of operation, and that council-set landing costs were the highest drivers of flight costs.
It’s not that we want to second-guess Ms Hanson, but we thought we should straight to authorities to find out for ourselves.
According to experts, it’s a combination of landing fees, fuel costs, aircraft and crew costs, as well levels of demand and the volume of traffic on any route.
A spokesman for Qantas told news.com.au the airline was aware of community frustration about pricing.
“We’ve been in discussions with regional communities for some time about their concerns on pricing,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“We can understand it’s frustrating when sale fares on longer routes are cheaper than some regional fares, but this has a lot to do with economies of scale.”
Qantas explained the per-kilometre cost for smaller aircraft in smaller markets was “significantly higher”.
“These dynamics are true to regional routes across Australia as well as domestic markets overseas,” the spokesman said.
While acknowledging costs were high, the airline said it was still possible to get a bargain in an out-of-the-way destination.
“We have regular sales to and from destinations across regional Australia.”
Qantas chose not to respond questions from news.com.au about Mr Snowdon’s claims of “price gouging”.
A Virgin Australia spokeswoman said the company is “committed to providing competitive airfares on regional routes.
“Airfares on these routes are driven by a combination of factors, including demand, competition, operating costs and airport pricing and taxes.
“Virgin always encourages people to book as early as possible to access cheapest flights.”
Regional carrier Regional Express Airlines (REX) has previously said it couldn’t compete with major carriers servicing big city destinations.
“Unfortunately the cost of doing business in a regional marketplace isn’t conducive to producing those types of fare levels,” a spokesman said.

Passing strange??
Did a bit of a trawl overseas to see how things stack up around the place in comparison with Australia. Regional travel in the USA is significantly cheaper than Australia. Similar aircraft used, similar route distances.
For sure economy of scale has an effect, given the higher population, but I don't think this can adequately explain why things are just so expensive here. I got to pondering, way back when, a company I worked for, calculated the cost of "Compliance" added around 10% to operating costs.Given the incredible growth of regulation in Australia, and the big R's interference in the way a business is managed, would you believe down to dictating who an operator can employ and who they can't, just what percentage of turnover has the cost of "Compliance" reached in todays Australian regulatory environment?

[thorn bird]

Also from news.com.au

DO YOU ever get the feeling we Aussies pay a lot more for air travel than other people?
Well, you’re spot on.
Australians are among those who typically fork out the most money for their airfares, according to the latest price flight index by online travel agent Kiwi.com.
The index takes into account the price of domestic and international air travel for customers in 80 of the world’s most-visited countries, looking both at budget airlines and full-service flights.
It calculates the average ticket cost for every 100km of travel, using high and low season flight costs for more than a million journeys.
And then it ranks each country from the cheapest average flight price through to the most expensive.
Australia was ranked at 69 of the 80 countries listed. New Zealand was at number 17, the United Kingdom at 27 and the United States at 30.
Malaysia was identified as the least expensive overall for airfares, with an average cost of $5.63 per 100km. Romania came out on top for the cheapest domestic flights ($4.09 per 100km) while Sweden was found to have the cheapest international fares ($1.76 per 100km).
Kiwi.com chief executive Oliver Dlouhy said ticket prices fluctuated constantly, based on a number of factors.
“Year on year changes can partly be attributed to fuel prices, sociopolitical shifts such as Brexit, recent elections and fluctuations in foreign exchange rates,” he said.
“The UK, for example, is seeing a larger number of Americans visit due to the weakening of the pound, whereas Egypt and Turkey saw a drop in ticket prices due to a decrease in demand due to regional turmoil.”
The index found the average cost of flights overall for flying out of Australia was $39.61 per 100km.
Short-haul low-cost flights cost $56.31 per 100km, and short-haul full-service flights cost $70.50 per 100km.
For every 100km on a long-haul flights, Aussie passengers typically paid $13.05 with budget services and $18.68 on full services.
Mr Dlouhy said the index could be useful to customers looking to travel further on their budget.
Last month, news.com.au reported that Aussies travelling to the UK were forking out up to a third more to pay for the same seat on Qantas’ Perth to London service than our British counterparts were paying to fly here.
Qantas said apparent price hike for Aussies — of about 29 per cent in economy, and 33 per cent in business class — was due to a number of factors.
“Like all airlines, our fares at either end of a route can be different for a variety of reasons. These include seasonal market demand, currency strength and exchange, and the general aviation market in each country,” a Qantas representative told news.com.au.

Interesting to see the Kiwi position on the table. Then again, considering they have regulations modelled on the US FAR's not surprising. Their regulatory suite being adopted throughout the Pacific, Australia's home grown gobbledygook making us stand out like a pimple on the bum of the world completely out of touch with everywhere and that costs a premium.
Are we safer than anywhere else? Statistics would say nope...just a hell of a lot more expensive. We really are turning into a dumb country.

[thorn bird]

Bugger all in the aviation section of the Friday OZ. But this article caught my eye. With a few key words subsituted it paints an almost perfect picture of why general aviation is in such a mess in Australia.  


DANIEL WILD The Australian12:00AM July 7, 2017

A popular myth is that Australia survived the 2007-08 global financial crisis because our major banks didn’t collapse and a tech­nic­al recessi­on was never called, but closer inspection reveals we didn’t survive the GFC. Indeed, the prospects for many workers and businesses have never been worse.

Nonetheless, we should be optimisti­c about our future­. Here are five steps the government should follow to turn the economy around and restore prosperity.

Step one is to stop living in denial­. The economy is in bad shape Our whole industry is in very bad shape). Private sector real wages went backwards by 0.3 per cent over the past year. Business investment is expected to reach a record­ low 9 per cent of GDP in just three years. And the unemployment rate is closer to 15 per cent when those marginally attached­ to the labour force are counted, as Adam Creighton showed on this page on May 22.

Meanwhile, annual income growth has been 65 per cent slower since the GFC than in the years between the Keating recession and the GFC. And to top it off, ­government debt will reach $725 billion by 2027-28. All this after 26 years of unbroken econo­mic growth.

Step two is to understand we can do something about it. The Grattan Institute recently found that two-thirds of the decline in non-mining business investment is due to “benign long-term structural changes in the economy”. in other words, sit back and watch decline unfold.Exactly what our political and bureaucratic elite has been doing for the past thirty years) But decline is a choice. Their choice. certainly not the GA industries

Bad policy has caused economic decay. Good policy delivers recovery.

Bad policy has brought a whole industry to its knees.

Step three is to acknowledge that we do not have a deficiency in aggregate demand. We have a collapse­ in the capacity of the economy to generate wealth. This is why productivity growth and investmen­t are low. When there are fewer things of value being produced, there is less income being generated.

Calls for more government interve­ntion to support aggregate demand are wrongheaded. We have had a decade of deficits, monetary easement and public infrastructur­e spending. Yet, instead of productivity and growth, all we managed was more debt.

Step four is to stop listening to the usual suspects. Especially the self appointed experts at the regulator. The experts reside in the industry.

We were told by the Treasury, the Reserve Bank of Australia and numerous private­ sector economists not to worry about the end of the mining investment boom. Non-mining investment would pick up once the exchange rate depreciates and interest rates and wages drop.

Well, the exchange rate is down 25 per cent since 2011, interest rates have been at record lows since 2013, and many Australians haven’t had a pay rise in years. Yet non-mining business investment is missing. The usual suspects have long been forecasting that busi­nes­s investment and growth would come back. But how?

Which brings us to the last step: eliminate bad policies.Yep, scrap the crap CAsA has already produced and adopt US FAR's There are many to choose from, from high corporate and personal income tax rates to an overbearing regulatory state. One area often talked about but seldom acted upon in earnest is red tape.

Most people think of it as a few pesky forms that must be filled in, Mate you should see what aviation has to fill in, CAsA by itself generates enough paperwork to soak up half the worlds rain forests or a couple of hours on the phone to the local council.

However, what most people don’t know is that it can take up to 5000 licences, approvals, and permits to set up a new mine, as was the case with the Tad’s Corner Project in central Queensland’s Galilee Basin. not much different in Aviation, but a whole lot more expensive

Meanwhile, starting a new restaurant in NSW requires filling out 48 different forms and obtaining 72 licences.

Red tape could well be the biggest­ impediment to growth in Australia. That has certainly been the case in Aviation

Recent IPA research found that red tape costs Australia $176bn a year in lost econo­mic output. This makes red tape Australia’s biggest industry. The good news is that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit.

Here is where the government should start. Implement a one-in, two-out policy, meaning that for every new rule or restriction implemented, two must be repealed. Thats what CAsA does only in reverse. ICAO mandates ONE. CAsA brings in FIVE.

Of course it is a crude approach, but it is easy to implement and worked wonders in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Abolish the energy efficiency equipment program that mandates minimum energy efficiency levels for commercial and residential equipment and appliances, and which adds to the cost of products without making a difference to the environment.

Eliminate section 487 of the federal environmental law, which allows green groups to sabotage development without incurring the costs of their actions.

Remove domestic regulation of product safety standards and instead­ permit market entry of all products cleared by overseas regul­ators of good standing.

Domestic regulations add to compli­ance costs without improving safety outcomes. In the case of CAsA very true. No better safety outcomes having spent half a billion dollars and counting. They are only half finished with the so called "reform" program. Tens of thousands of pages of regulation, with not a shred of evidence that they have had any affect whatsoever on what they are intended to do, other than decimate a complete industry

There is no shortage of red tape. The government should start cutting. It will make a bigger difference­ than most people think.

Daniel Wild is a research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and previously advised on macroeconomics at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

[Peetwo]

Interesting article thorny...

Much like aviation, these economic experts and commentators continue to provide free of charge good factual analysis with simple solutions for the problems that are currently inhibiting growth in the Australian economy. Yet the fat cat bureaucrats and pollywaffles in Can'tberra continue to ignore all the free advice while slurping from the taxpayer trough and squabbling amongst themselves - meanwhile the same mistakes get made over and over again...

Here's another interesting article thorny, on airports and airport development, this time from the other Aunty...

What Australia can learn from the world's best airports
RN
By Annabelle Quince for Rear Vision

Posted earlier today at 7:00amSat 8 Jul 2017, 7:00am
Photo: Successful airports are built with future capacity increases in mind. (Getty Images: Zgr-pro)


Airports were once nothing more than grassy strips suited for biplanes, with only rudimentary forms of infrastructure.

But after the Second World War, aircraft became bigger and heavier. Accordingly, airports began to pave their runways to handle heavier planes and expand their terminals. They ended up with buildings that looked recognisably like the airports we see today: cities in their own right.

So, what makes a good airport, and are there things we can learn from the world's best?

Privatisation vs government control

Before the Second World War — and for a long time after — most airports were owned and operated by the state. The largest airport in the Netherlands, Schiphol Airport, was owned by the city of Amsterdam until the 1950s.

When it became clear that the city was not willing or able to finance a Schiphol upgrade, the national government of the Netherlands took ownership of three-quarters of the newly upgraded aerodrome.

But governmental control comes with challenges, particularly when the interests of different levels of government come into conflict. This problem, according Douglas Baker, head of property and planning at Queensland University of Technology, is particularly true in Australia.

Listen to the episode

Annabelle Quince looks at the best airports in the world.

"On one hand we have airports controlled by national governments expanding, and then we have state planning and city planning expanding around that," he says.

Professor Baker says that the layering of governments can lead to "silences" between the two. "That occurred worldwide, I think — certainly in the United States and certainly Australia."

In the 1980s, under Margaret Thatcher, the British government began to experiment with airport privatisation. Portions of London's Gatwick were sold off, and in Australia airport privatisation accelerated under the Howard government.

Today, Professor Baker says, Australia has the most privatised airport system in the world.

'A shopping mall near a runway'

You can divide the real estate of airports into two categories: air side (runways, hangars) and land side (food courts, duty free stores). Today, Australia's largely privatised airports are among the most profitable businesses in the country — and a large chunk of that profit is not related to aviation.

According to Professor Baker, some 30 to 40 per cent of Australian airports' revenue comes from the land side.

"One of the most lucrative revenue streams is parking," he says.

"They are now businesses. They have shareholders, and the airports have got a turnover to shareholders — and fair enough."

Photo: Airports are major pieces of infrastructure, and a variety of factors can contribute to their success or failure. (Unsplash.com: Skyler Smith, CC-0)

For Antonin Kazda, professor of airport design and operation at the University of Žilina in Slovakia, this throws up something of an existential question for airport operators.

"Is it still an airport, or is it a shopping mall somewhere near a runway?" he asks.

Professor Kazda argues that the rush to create new revenue streams through commercial development has an impact on what is termed, in the business, passenger experience.
(Intuitively, this makes sense: navigating crowded shops en route to a boarding gate is hardly an enjoyable experience.)

Interestingly, Professor Kazda sees variety by country. In the UK and Ireland, he says airports have become like big shopping malls. "On the other hand, if you go to the US, it's quite the opposite."

Capacity to build

In the 1970s, Singapore's aviation industry faced something of a conundrum. Global air travel was a booming industry, and its existing two airports were struggling to keep up.

These forces led to the development of Changi airport — now consistently voted one of the best airports in the world. For Alan Chong, associate professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, Singaporean governments were right to target aviation as a growth industry.

"Flights to and from Australia, of course, had to stop over in Singapore at some point," he says.

The new Changi airport, Professor Chong says, was deliberately situated by the sea: with land reclamation techniques ensuring it would have little impact on residential dwellings (at least in theory).

The world's successful airports

For Professor Baker, the world's best airports are Changi, Hong Kong, Amsterdam's Schiphol and Vancouver.


Photo: Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport is built unusually close to the CBD for a major airport. (Flickr.com: Paula Funnell, CC-BY-NC-SA)

"What makes all these airports a joy to move through is the passenger experience in terms of moving through customs and then moving into the terminals and transferring," he says.

According to Professor Chong, what makes a good airport is government control. "Aviation is a political goal which should not be impeded in any way."

Government ownership ensures that, in the likely event of expansion, airports have an easier time negotiating land acquisition and resettlement processes, he says.

Sydney's new airport

Airport constructions are, like any major work of infrastructure, relatively thin on the ground. So where does the above leave Badgerys Creek, Sydney's long-awaited second airport?

Professor Baker says the first thing to be decided has to be the role of the new aerodrome.

"Do we want an airport that does all the regional hubbing? Do we want an airport that competes directly with Sydney? What type of second airport are we developing?" he asks.

Professor Alan Chong, for his part, is excited. "Building a second airport from scratch is one of the most wonderful things in anyone's national development plan," he says.

"An airport is no longer just a bricks and mortar facility for aviation transit, it has to be a destination in itself."

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

IA chief believes airport privatisation the way to go...

While on the airport development and ownership theme I note the following article from IA Chair Mark Birrell, via the Oz:

Mark Birrell: Privatisation paves the way to prosperity

• Mark Birrell
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM July 21, 2017
  

[url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/mark-birrell-privatisation-paves-the-way-to-prosperity/news-story/a516f6acac9fdc67e3d5b8ce1eb75615#comments][/url]
Airport privatisation has a great deal to teach us. We know from Australia’s experience that private sector ownership of economic infrastructure has delivered better outcomes for customers and — with the right goals and regulatory structures — we are getting more efficient and responsive services.

As Caroline Wilkie rightly pointed out in her article on airport ownership last week, the privatisation of aviation operations and assets more than two decades ago has more than doubled the passenger capacity at our nation’s major airports and supported the growth of our tourism and freight export industries.

Contrast this with the system up until the mid-1990s where Australia’s main airports were government-owned and run.

Prior to privatisation, airports failed to keep pace with demand, investment lagged and there were few incentives for service improvements. As the Productivity Commission found, this led to productivity at Australian airports’ falling significantly short of international best practice standards.

Under private ownership and an independent regulatory framework, the aviation sector has performed remarkably well. With effective oversight of prices and service quality across our aviation services, there is a higher level of certainty for industry players, and more room for innovation and competition to thrive. There will be legitimate questions by travellers about ancillary services like car parking costs at major airports, but the overall consumer and user experience is vastly improved.

Unfortunately, we have not seen the same success replicated in a number of other infrastructure sectors. There is still a significant task ahead for governments to further reform our energy sector, and commit to a new round of policy and regulatory reforms in water and transport.

Infrastructure Australia has always held the view that markets are the best mechanism at our disposal for delivering effective, efficient and high-quality infrastructure services.
But in the past, our infrastructure sectors — energy, telecommunications, water and transport — have been dominated by public monopolies. This ownership and management structure offers limited incentives to deliver infrastructure successfully and fairly, as governments have conflicting goals when they are simultaneously the user, owner, operator and regulator of services.

The default role of government in the delivery of services from economic infrastructure should be to set the right conditions to ensure the efficient use of the infrastructure. Governments must have the best planning, regulatory and market structures.

In areas where competition within a market is possible, such as electricity generation and retailing, the direct role of government as a market participant distorts outcomes and reduces customer benefits. In these circumstances, governments are better off taking a regulatory role and ensure that at all times the market operates in the long-term best interests of customers.

In the coming decades there will be a need for the Australian economy to harness new technology and service innovations that will also disrupt traditional models of supply.
Under private ownership, the aviation sector is well positioned to take advantage of the coming technological changes — and respond with the right investment decisions.

We should therefore hold up airport privatisation as a model that can be followed in other sectors. And in doing so we should never forget that the original moves to turn the centralised Federal Airports Corporation into a set of locally run, modern private airports were not free of challenges or critics. Some will continue to argue that privatisation is a failed experiment, but I would encourage them to look to our aviation sector for an example of how targeted reform has delivered a better system that facilitates the movement of people and goods quickly, safely and at low cost.

Mark Birrell is the chairman of Infrastructure Australia.

  
MTF...P2

[thorn bird]

Oh dear P2, Corporate Cronyism dressed up as privatisation.
Cant quite remember exactly but didn't Rupert Murdock say "Everyone hates monopolies.....until you own one".

These PR articles seem to be popping up everywhere at the moment.
Could it be the airports are getting a tad sensitive about bad press? or maybe the pollywaffles are finally waking up to the fraud perpetrated on the Australian public by their mandarins in cahoots with a certain Big bank?

Watched a wonderful documentary last night on the ABC called "UTOPIA" which illustrates just how the bureaucrats go about bamboozling their ministers and the public, dreaming up these mega infrastructure projects. A very enlightening show.

I had the unfortunate job of picking up some passengers at KSA the other day. Hadn't been there by car for years. I generally get friends to catch a train to a suburban railway station and pick them up from there, even though trains fares from the airport are four times the price of normal urban fares.
The only explanation for this, I imagine, is that unlike anyone else in Australia the airport owners own whats under the airport and charge the railways rent for the stations, jeez not even farmers have that right.

Sorry I'm rambling, anyway my passengers commented on their impression of KSA as a shambles, which I'm inclined to agree with and to add insult to injury I got stung a parking fee after exceeding the ridiculously short time allowed in the pick up park before they sting you. I got stung because of the traffic jam waiting to get into the park.

My experience suggests the whole set up is to maximise profits over users convenience. Great first impression for visitors to our country.

Sorry Mr Birrell, your Puff piece doesn't pass the sniff test.

Here's a couple more for everyone to have a sniff at.

Last Fridays Australian by Caroline Wilkie CEO of the Australian Airports Association


Australians fly. A lot. Our island nation and our sheer geographical size mean air travel is part and parcel of our connectedness here and across the globe. And so, in this respect, our airports are our lifeblood.

We have fly in, fly out workers. We have flying doctors and emergency services, a burgeoning airfreight sector, as well as myriad charter operators in the tourism sector.

More than three million passenger journeys occur between more than 180 airports in Australia every week. We welcome 642,000 overseas visitors and farewell about 737,500 Australians on outbound trips on 58 international airlines each month.

In 1996, when the federal government still operated our major airports, it managed the movement of 67 million passengers a year.

Today, under the private ownership model, this number has grown to more than 154 million passengers.

In addition to tourism and international education being among our biggest export industries, our airports handle more than $100 billion of freighted exports and imports every year — such as gold, computers, food, flowers, industrial components and mail.

Each one of these journeys begins and ends at our airports.

In large part, Australia’s efficient connectedness by air is what it is today because of ongoing investment in our airports by their private sector owners and operators.

This month marks 20 years since the first three of those transitions took place at Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth airports. Many more followed in 1998. Since then air travel and the development of our airport economies in Australia have not looked back.

In its most recent regulatory report the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission indicated the operators of the biggest four airports in Australia invested $7bn across a 10-year period.

That investment has helped attract new carriers and open new routes and destinations for Australian passengers and competition that keeps downward pressure on airfares.

It has funded upgrades to infrastructure so airlines from around the world can land and transport Australian passengers on Airbus A380s.

It has cultivated commercial and retail business to the point where 100,000 Australians are now employed within airport precincts across the country.

It has delivered better security and facilities to ensure passengers begin and end their journeys safely.

It has helped to preserve regional air travel, with major airports and small council airports investing to support regional services across the country.

Through investment, airport operators also have developed the terminals that have underpinned the establishment and growth of low-cost carriers, Virgin and Jetstar among them.

Ongoing investments such as these are one of the reasons carriers such as Virgin and Jetstar have been able to keep airfares low.

Advances such as the self-serve technology being rolled out by airports are not only streamlining the check-in process for passengers but also are helping airlines to reduce their costs.

In fact, all of the investment by major airports in aeronautical infrastructure is designed to facilitate operational efficiencies for airlines and minimise their capacity constraints.

Improvements to runways, taxiways and aircraft parking foster growth, sustainability and a safe and competitive aviation market. And these investments have continued despite the return on aviation assets falling during the past five years. These are long-term investments funded primarily by Australian families through their superannuation.

This is in stark contrast to major public infrastructure throughout Australia — take ports, roads and urban public transport, for example — many of which bear the scars of systemic financial neglect and a failure to future-proof.

The taxpayer has not had to prop up our major airports for 20 years in the way the public purse has been relied on in every other infrastructure sector.

That is thanks to the decision made those two decades ago to open the doors to private investment and let innovation and enterprise thrive.

Investment by airport operators has not only proven vital to the customer experience.

It has provided the dynamic operational environment airlines require and has cultivated economic opportunity for the countless businesses and other services now run from, or as part of, airports across the country.

Caroline Wilkie is the chief executive of the Australian Airports Association

The above the biggest load of, to paraphrase K, BOLLOCKS! I've ever had the misfortune to read, the barf bucket was full after I'd finished.

Stop bashing us, 'bruised' Melbourne Airport tells airlines

Patrick Hatch

The boss of Melbourne Airport has hit back at claims that Australia's monopoly airports are gouging airlines and that privatisation has been a failure.

Instead, Lyell Strambi says airports should get more credit for helping boost carriers' profits.

"I feel a little bruised that we're not getting full credit for the great work that we actually do," says Melbourne Airport chief Lyell Strambi.

Airlines have been on a war path over what they say are skyrocketing fees to land and take off at airports, and earlier this year Qantas, Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and Regional Express formed the group Airlines for Australia and New Zealand to lobby for relief.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's annual report into airports this year found airports had steadily increased how much they charged airlines and boosted their profit margins over the past 10 years, taking in $1.57 billion more in revenue than if they kept the fees steady in real terms.

And the privatisation of Australia's airports has recently come under global criticism.

But Mr Strambi, Melbourne Airport's CEO, said airlines and airports' interests were aligned, and that airports had made significant investments to help carriers improve their profits.

He pointed to his airport building facilities to accommodate the double-decker Airbus A380 flown by Qantas and other airlines, and the building of the new T4 low-cost carrier terminal as examples where the airport's investment had improved airlines' efficiency.


"You need to look past the headline to actually say, yes, prices may well have increased beyond CPI from an airport charges perspective, but when you look at airfares and the resulting cost to the customer, they've continued to come down," Mr Strambi said.

Melbourne Airport's boss has hit back at claims of gouging.

"I feel a little bruised that we're not getting full credit for the great work that we actually do."
Try landing in LA

Alexandre de Juniac, chief executive of commercial aviation's global body the International Air Travel Association, named and shamed Australia last month as a country where privatising airports had been a failure, resulting in higher fees for airlines to the detriment of passengers and local economies.

But Mr Strambi, whose airport marked 20 years of private ownership this week, said anyone critical of privatisation should visit a government-owned airport such as Los Angeles International.

"That was a government facility and it actually looked and felt like a government facility: under investment, no real passenger amenity," he said.

"It's been really interesting, they haven't privatised the airport but they have introduced a private partner in Westfield into that airport and that has fundamentally changed the passenger experience."
'Liberation of capital'

Mr Strambi said privatising Australia's airports had resulted in a "liberation of capital from the public purse", and that private owners - a group of investors, mostly superannuation funds, in Melbourne's case - had greater discipline and accountability than governments would have.

Sydney Airport had the highest profit margin for aeronautical services last year at 46.7 per cent, followed by Brisbane Airport (44.9 per cent), Melbourne (38.2 per cent) and Perth (33.5 per cent), according to the ACCC.

Melbourne Airport estimates passenger numbers will double to 70 million a year over the next two decades and that it will overtake Sydney Airport as the nation's busiest.

It hopes to have a third runway operational by 2022 to deal with that growth.

[thorn bird]

Another waltz down memory lane which so clearly illustrates how the more things change the more they stay the same.
The attachment, a flyer from our Illustrious regulator cirque early eighties.

RegReform[1].jpg Size: 87.32 KB  Downloads: 3

The above bought to you by "INEPTOCRACY" the Australian system of government so enthusiastically embraced by our regulator.

image001111.jpeg Size: 78.92 KB  Downloads: 2

[thorn bird]

Our very own ATSB gets a mention in BCA magazine.

This article appears in the July 2017 issue of Business & Commercial Aviation with the title “Unstabilized Approach?”

A Malaysia Airlines Airbus A330 began its approach to Melbourne (Tullamarine) Airport at 0750 Eastern Summer Time on March 14, 2015, after an uneventful flight from Kuala Lumpur. In the final stages of the approach, at approximately 50 ft. AGL, the captain reported feeling the aircraft sink and manually increased the thrust to slow the rate of descent. Despite this action, the aircraft made a hard landing — hard enough to require replacement of the aircraft’s main landing gear. There were no reported injuries.

The Australian Transportation Safety Board (ATSB) mounted a major investigation into the incident. Ultimately, the safety board determined that the final approach had become unstable because of the pilot flying’s control inputs after he disengaged the autopilot (approximately 700 ft. AGL) and descended below the desired vertical profile. “The continuation of the approach and an inappropriate attempt to recover the situation,” said the board, “led to a high rate of descent at touchdown.”


Figure 1: Melbourne airport is equipped with a precision approach indicator (PAPI) system. The system provides a method for pilots to maintain the 3-deg. glide path by referencing the color of the four lights. The crew of an aircraft on the 3-deg. glide path would see two white lights and two red lights. Credit: Flight Safety Australia

Soon after the event, Malaysia Airlines circulated a memorandum to its A330 flight crews highlighting the incident and advising of the relevant procedures intended to minimize the chances of a similar occurrence. The flight crew involved also undertook additional training and assessment before returning to flight duties.

Perhaps more important is the ATSB’s message to the flying community at large: “A stable approach significantly reduces the risk of a hard landing. If an approach does become unstable, a rushed attempt to recover the approach may produce an undesirable aircraft response. There is also a risk of breaking down the shared understanding between the pilots, which in turn limits the opportunity of the other flight crew to detect or react to inappropriate actions. When landing, pilots should maintain a safety philosophy of ‘if in doubt, go around.’”

What Happened

The incident occurred in the late stages of the Airbus’ approach to Runway 34 at Melbourne. The flight was a regular passenger service from Malaysia. Bureau of Meteorology weather data was consistent with the flight crew’s reports of fine flying conditions and not a factor in the incident. The flight crew consisted of a captain, who was the pilot flying (PF) and a first officer, who was the pilot monitoring (PM).

Melbourne’s Runway 34 was not equipped with an ILS, so a non-precision approach was performed. The runway did have a precision approach path indicator (PAPI) system consisting of four lights that provided visual guidance for the pilots to determine if the aircraft was maintaining the correct glidepath. Figure 1 shows what a crew using the PAPI system would expect to see depending on their relative height to the correct approach path. A crew maintaining the nominal 3-deg. path should see two white lights and two red lights.

Flight data showed that the Airbus pilot’s sidestick pitch control inputs increased in frequency and magnitude after he disengaged the autopilot.

In response to these inputs, the aircraft’s autothrottle system varied the engine thrust to maintain a target speed, as per system design, and the aircraft pitch angles fluctuated between approximately -0.5-deg. nose down and +5.0-deg. nose up. The net result of the varying thrust settings and pitch angles was a fluctuating rate of descent between approximately 380 and 960 fpm.


Figure 2: The ideal glide path during an approach is shown in green, with the PAPI thresholds in red (low) and white (high). The yellow line is the actual path of the aircraft as dervied from the flight data. Just below 150 ft., four red lights would have been indicated to the crew.

Large sidestick inputs, said the Safety Board, specifically nose-down inputs, have the potential to inhibit the vertical speed reduction function, which is an automated function that provides some protection against touchdown at very high vertical speeds.

The airline addresses the use of the A330 autopilot during final approach in its flight crew operating manual (FCOM). The airplane, says the manual, will be stabilized during the final approach when the autopilot is engaged in the proper mode. “Therefore, when disconnecting the AP for a manual landing, the pilot should avoid the temptation to make large inputs on the sidestick,” it cautions.

As the incident aircraft passed 300 ft. AGL, the FDR recorded a rate of descent of 960 fpm. This neared the operator’s maximum stabilized approach limit of 1,000 fpm when below 500 ft. AGL. As well as a high rate of descent, actual exceedences of the operator’s stabilization criteria included:

Large changes to pitch inputted by the pilot flying, including negative pitch values.
Fluctuations in the rate of descent over a large range that were abnormal for the phase of flight.
Incorrect glidepath.
From approximately 250 ft. AGL, the aircraft was trending low and continuing below the glidepath. At this point the pilots would have been able to observe three red lights and one white light on the PAPI. This trend was allowed to continue until the aircraft was well below the desired glidepath to the extent that the PAPI would have indicated four red lights from approximately 125 ft.

Figure 2 displays in green the ideal glidepath during an approach and the PAPI thresholds in red (low) and white (high). The yellow is the actual path of the aircraft derived from the flight data. Just below 150 ft., four red lights would have been indicated to the crew.

The company’s standard operating procedures (SOPs) and manufacturer’s recommendations dictated that if an approach becomes unstable below 500 ft. AGL, a go-around must be initiated by the PF and/or the PM must alert the PF of the unstable approach and encourage a go-around.

Included in the operator’s flight crew training manual and the manufacturer’s operating philosophy of the aircraft were a set of “golden rules” to be followed by flight crews at all times while operating the aircraft. Rule No. 4 states:

If the aircraft does not follow the desired vertical or lateral flight path, or the selected targets, and if the flight crew does not have sufficient time to analyze and solve the situation, the flight crew must immediately take appropriate or required actions, as follows.

The PF should change the level of automation

From managed guidance to selected guidance, or
From selected guidance to manual flying.
The PM should

Communicate with the PF, and when necessary
Challenge the actions of the PF, or
Take over control.
During flight crew interviews there was no indication that the PM communicated with the PF about the unstable approach conditions, considered taking over from the PF and/or encouraged the PF to conduct a go-around, said the ATSB.

Attempted Recovery

At 60 ft. AGL, the captain moved the thrust levers forward momentarily into the TOGA (Takeoff/Go Around) detent. He told investigators that this was done in response to a feeling that the aircraft was sinking below the path, and the intention was to reduce this sink by applying more thrust to the engines. The placement of the thrust lever into TOGA put the aircraft automation into the go-around autopilot modes and changed the display on the primary flight display flight mode annunciator (FMA). The captain subsequently reduced the thrust levers.

The PM, upon seeing the modes on the FMA change, assumed that a go-around was being conducted and awaited further announcement from the captain. The PM reported noticing the thrust levers reducing and that the aircraft was not flaring and applied nose-up input to the sidestick at the same time as the PF.

At the time of the occurrence there was no procedure on the A330 for the use of manual thrust for this purpose. Prior to 2009, a procedure existed in the A330 documentation that allowed a specific use of manual thrust in difficult environmental conditions. Airbus advised that after an analysis of in-service events the procedure was removed from all operational documents. An FCOM bulletin was published at the time, which explained the removal of the procedure.

Manipulation of the thrust levers in this manner had the effect of:

Disengaging the autothrottle, thereby inhibiting some of the available autoflight system protections including the target speed function (which automatically maintained the desired speed and adjusted for fluctuation in the wind), and the vertical speed reduction function.
Causing a pitch-up tendency — as underslung engines increase thrust, they typically apply an upward pitching moment to the aircraft. This usually requires a large nose-down input by the pilot flying to prevent the pitch-up. At this stage in the approach applying large nose-down inputs differed from the gradual nose-up input normally required to complete the flare.
Breaking down of the shared mental model between the pilot flying and pilot monitoring in that the latter believed the advancement of the thrust levers was the initiation of a go-around.
Shortly after the power changes, the aircraft touched down at a vertical speed of approximately 700 fpm and with a vertical acceleration of 2.61g. The aircraft also touched down at approximately 170 m (560 ft.) from the landing threshold, short of the normal touchdown zone of between 304 m (1,000 ft.) and 609 m (2,000 ft.).

Airbus produced a complete load analysis of the event based on recorded flight data provided by the operator. The conclusion of this analysis was that several components in the left and right gear had “exceeded their design load limits and may have been detrimentally overloaded.”

The manufacturer’s analysis assessed the affected components to be unserviceable and requiring replacement before the next flight. Several supplementary inspections were also required.

Safety Analysis

In its analysis of the event, the ATSB said a stable approach is a crucial element of final approach. Identifying an unstable approach and taking the appropriate corrective action is key to maintaining safety at touchdown. This analysis examines the stability of the aircraft and the decision-making in the final stages of the approach.

Analysis of the flight data in this incident relating to the stability of the final approach showed from 300 ft. AGL the approach was unstable due to large control inputs, erratic rates of descent and deviation below the glidepath. Throughout the final approach, the PF’s sidestick inputs determined the aircraft’s vertical profile and, in the absence of any external factors, were therefore contributing to the unstable approach.

Researchers have stated that, in time-constrained environments, individuals can make decisions using intuitive reasoning where the steps are often unconscious and based on pattern recognition. For intuitive decision-making, an experienced individual will identify a problem situation as similar to a situation they have dealt with before and will extract a plan of action from memory. If time permits, they will confirm their expectations prior to initiating action. If time does not permit, actions will be initiated with uncertainty that may result in a poor decision.

In this investigation, said the safety board, the PM was late to recognize that the approach was unstable and as such did not encourage the PF to conduct a go-around, as per the operator’s SOPs.

During the last 50 ft. of the approach (4 sec. before touchdown) the PF inappropriately used the thrust levers in an attempt to arrest the high rate of descent. Despite the absence of the standard phraseology of “go-around” by the PF, the PM mistook this advancement of the thrust levers as the initiation of a go-around. The PM, expecting that the PF had initiated a go-around and realizing that the aircraft was still descending with a nose-down attitude, placed a hand on the sidestick and applied a nose-up input. A dual input was therefore recorded as the aircraft touched down.

“Probably due to time constraints, neither crewmember communicated their intentions,” said the safety board. “Neither the initial thrust advancement nor the subsequent thrust reversal by the PF were communicated to the PM. As a result, the PM was unclear about the action taken by the PF.”

Large and erratic pitch inputs by the PF, as well as large fluctuations in the rate of descent and visual reference of the PAPI lights provided opportunities for the crew to recognize an unstable approach, said the Board. Despite this, there was no evidence of actions or support language to suggest that the unstable approach was identified. The operator’s procedures whereby an unstable approach should result in a go-around were not followed.

The manual thrust technique used by the captain to arrest the sink and recover the approach was used on other aircraft types previously flown by the captain. There was no current approved procedure on the A330 for this technique. However, analysis of the flight data determined that this action alone did not contribute to or increase the severity of the hard landing.

The captain and first officer told investigators that, in retrospect, they should have conducted a go-around in accordance with the operator’s training procedures. A Flight Safety Foundation study of hard landings determined — statistically, anyway — that runway contact from a late go-around is preferable to attempting to recover an unstable approach.

Elements of an unstable approach are not unusual during flight operations. However, the actions taken by the flight crew in response are key to maintaining flight safety, said the ATSB. “The training records of the crew were reviewed to establish the possibility that a training or performance issue led to the PF’s actions. Apart from the PF’s misunderstanding of the use of the thrust levers to reduce the rate of descent, there was no indication of a systemic issue with either crewmember.”

The ATSB made these formal findings of “contributing factors” after its investigation:

The final approach became unstable at around 300 ft. above the ground due to the control inputs from the captain.
Inadequate monitoring and communication by the crew led to a lack of recognition of the undesirable flight state and the continuation of an unstable approach.
Continuation of the unstable approach led to a high rate of descent at touchdown and resulted in a hard landing in excess of the aircraft design loads and short of the normal touchdown area.
The captain used an unapproved manual thrust procedure in an attempt to recover the approach.
The bottom line, as expressed so elegantly by the ATSB: When in doubt, take it around!

[Peetwo]

Sims calls it straight on privatisation & monopoly GBEs 
   
Via the Simply Marvellous Horsepooh :

Privatisation has damaged the economy, says ACCC chief

• [/url]Patrick Hatch
  [url=http://www.smh.com.au/business/by/Patrick-Hatch-hvf90]
  

Selling public assets has created unregulated monopolies that hurt productivity and damage the economy, according to Australia's consumer and competition tsar, who says he is on the verge of becoming a privatisation opponent.
 
In a blistering attack on decades of common government practice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said the sale of ports and electricity infrastructure and the opening of vocational education to private companies had caused him and the public to lose faith in privatisation and deregulation. 
 

ACCC chairman Rod Sims says privatisation is hurting productivity.  Photo: Vince Caligiuri  
"I've been a very strong advocate of privatisation for probably 30 years; I believe it enhances economic efficiency," Mr Sims told the Melbourne Economic Forum on Tuesday. 

"I'm now almost at the point of opposing privatisation because it's been done to boost proceeds, it's been done to boost asset sales and I think it's severely damaging our economy."

Deregulating the electricity market and selling poles and wires in Queensland and NSW, meanwhile, had seen power prices almost double there over five years. Photo: Glenn Hunt  

Mr Sims said privatising ports, including Port Botany and Port Kembla in NSW, which were privatised together, and the Port of Melbourne, which came with conditions restricting competition from other ports, were examples where monopolies had been created without suitable regulation to control how much they could then charge users. 

"Of course you get these lovely headlines in the Financial Review saying 'Gosh, what a successful sale, look at the multiple they achieved'," Mr Sims said.

"Well of course they bloody well did: the owners factored in very large price rises because there's no regulation on how they set the price of a monopoly. How dopey is that?"

Mr Sims, who recently launched legal action against Medibank Private alleging it concealed changes to health insurance policies to boost profits ahead of its privatisation, said billions of dollars had been wasted in the scandal-plagued vocational education sector since it was opened up to the private sector.

A deal to privatise the Port of Melbourne was struck in March with conditions that restricted competition from other ports.  Photo: Joe Armao  

Deregulating the electricity market and selling poles and wires in Queensland and NSW, meanwhile, had seen power prices almost double there over five years, he said. 

"When you meet people in the street and they say 'I don't want privatisation because it boosts prices' and you dismiss them ... recent examples suggest they're right," he told the room of influential economic and policy experts. 

"The excessive spend on electric poles and wires has damaged our productivity. The higher energy price we're getting from some poor gas and electricity policies are damaging some of our productive sectors."

Mr Sims said he was growing "exasperated" as governments including the Commonwealth became more explicit in trying to maximise proceeds from asset sales.  

"I think a sharp uppercut is necessary and that's why I'm saying: stop the privatisation," he said.

Mr Sims also used the forum to continue a public stoush with opponents of a proposed "effects test", saying they were relying on "bogus" arguments against the Harper review proposal to give the ACCC powers to block action that had the purpose or effect of substantially lessening competition.
 
The Productivity Commission last week joined the Business Council of Australia, the federal Labor opposition and the supermarket giants in opposing the so-called "effects test", which is a pet policy of National Party MPs including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. 

MTF...P2

[thorn bird]

Again Mr. Smith highlights the bleeding obvious. Its been obvious for years but the governments answer is??? Ah lets hold an inquiry.
There's been an "Inquiry" almost every year for the past twenty years, all coming to pretty much the same conclusion, but just in case, lets have another one, only this time exclude those with skin in the game, the AOPA from the table, that way we might get a different more favourable conclusion.
All the while the statistics incontrovertibly prove that the GA industry is in fact spiralling down the black hole to oblivion.The big question is WHY? what possible motive could a government have for destroying an industry? Do they even have a motive? or are they just so stupid and inept that they are completely blind to the obvious.
It simply beggars belief that a government can produce an Act, form a quango corporation, charge them with regulating, then stand back with no checks or balances no audit to insure what they are actually doing is in the interest of the industry they regulate, is achieving what the Act charges them to do, and be mindful of the publics money they expend. In every aspect CAsA has failed. In every aspect they have simply heaped pile after pile of rubbish regulation on an already fragile industry and achieved absolutely nothing except the steady decline of the industry they oversee, and expended vast amounts of taxpayers dollars on a farce.[/b]


The Australian2:52PM July 18, 2017

ANNABEL HEPWORTH
Aviation EditorSydney
@HepworthAnnabel

The number of general aviation aircraft that are flying has fallen further, sparking warnings by businessman and aviation veteran Dick Smith that the sector faces “destruction”.

Mr Smith issued the warning about the challenges facing the general aviation sector as recent figures from the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics show that the number of active aviation aircraft doing GA work was 8976 in 2015.

This is a fall on the year prior, when there were 10,034 active aircraft in GA operations. In 2013, there were 10,173 aircraft, although this was up on the 9448 ­recorded in 2012. Mr Smith lamented that “less and less” people were flying.

“It’s absolutely criminal what’s happening to general aviation. It’s the basis for airline pilot training,” Mr Smith told The Australian.

“It’s very serious ... it’s basically the destruction of an industry.”

As evidence of the decline in the sector, Mr Smith pointed to the serious difficulties he had in attempting to getting his beloved Cessna Citation serviced.

Mr Smith sold the Citation last year, saying at the time that it was “simply too expensive to keep it running in Australia with the regulations we are forced to comply with”.

The warning comes after it emerged last month that a landmark review into the costs and red tape impacting the sector has been delayed. While the report, also being conducted by BITRE, was expected to be finished by June 30, it will now be finalised in “coming months”, the office of Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester indicated recently.

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Australia executive director Benjamin Morgan said the BITRE data highlighted a decline in some of the biggest areas of aviation activity.

The Australian has confirmed that AOPA has written to Mr Chester and Civil Aviation Safety Authority boss Shane Carmody drawing attention to the figures.


In a letter last week, Mr Morgan also attached 57 pages of comments from participants in a petition on saving Australia’s general aviation industry.

The BITRE data showed that by hours flown, training was down by 5.6 per cent in 2015 over 2014, and had fallen by 14.5 per cent in 2014 over 2013. Survey and photography work was also well down.

“This isn’t surprising considering that our pilot number graphs and avgas sales numbers all show a 35 per cent decline over the past 10 years,” Mr Morgan said.

He said AOPA’s economic modelling conservatively suggested the decline in the sector over the past five years “translates to a half-billion-dollar loss to the broader Australian economy”.

“AOPA Australia firmly believes the declines have continued through 2016 and are forecast to accelerate through 2017, unless genuine reforms are initiated,” Mr Morgan said. It was alarming that the report showed that one in five aircraft were now unused, because this meant a share of the fleet was “no longer providing an economic contribution to the industry”.

The report showed there were 1367 aircraft zero flying hours where the owners blamed repair, maintenance or restoration work.

The data also showed hours flown for non-scheduled commercial air transport — charter flights — was down 10.9 per cent in 2015 from 2014, and had fallen 17.9 per cent in 2014 over 2013.

[b]CAsA has quite obviously failed as a regulator. We hear so often Australia has the safest skies in the world.
Bunkum! Australia has the most expensive skies in the world for pretty much the same reasons we have the dearest electricity in the world. Incompetence!
CAsA has squandered almost half a billion Dollars and taken more than a quarter of a century to "Reform" our regulations and they are only half finished, New Zealand completed their regulatory reform in a couple of years for a few million Dollars. They modelled their regulations on the most successful and safest regulations in the world the US FAR's. Today NZ regulations have been adopted throughout the Pacific, Australia's home grown industry killing rubbish is an international joke.

[Peetwo]

Dick Smith & a fair go for Aussie battlers -

While on the subject of Dick Smith, I note that he now has a handle on twitter and has created a new website called 'Dick Smith Fair GO'...  : https://www.dicksmithfairgo.com.au/ 

The following quote, from the DSFGG manifesto, Dick explains what inspired him to start this campaign:

..At the suggestion of a friend of mine, I have decided to show leadership and attempt a change for the better. This will be done in the form of the Dick Smith Fair Go Group to influence one or both of the major political parties to come up with policies that reflect the interests of the 99%.

Of course it won’t be easy. The only way the major parties can be elected at the present time is by spending a staggering amount on election advertising, and this comes primarily from wealthy donors who have a vested interest in growth to provide more consumers to buy their products, keeping perpetual growth going.

Rather than start a new political party (a very difficult and slow undertaking), I have decided it would be more realistic and effective to influence the existing parties where they feel it most – at the ballot box.

With modern political parties only being elected with a 1% or 2% majority, it is clear that you only need a very small number of voters to tip the balance. That is the plan!
Good reading, and I hope you come on board as a supporter of the group. It’s free, but I would appreciate any donations to assist in communicating our plans...

MTF...P2

[thorn bird]

No need to worry P2. Big rumour doing the rounds, North Korea is about to bestow North Korean citizenship
on all Australia's Politicians. They also will not accept any renouncements.
If this is enacted it would seem the entire Australian parliament must resign. Only people approved by North Korea will not have citizenship bestowed on them.

[thorn bird]

The Australian12:00AM August 18, 2017

MEREDITH BOOTH
ReporterAdelaide
@MeredithBooth

Two fatal Angel Flights in six years have prompted Australia’s civil aviation safety regulator to re-examine standards for community service flight providers.

The review was prompted by the June 28 crash of an Angel Flight near Mount Gambier airport that killed private pilot Grant Gilbert, 78 and his passengers Emily Redding, 16, and her mother Tracy Redding, 43 who were on their way to a medical appointment in Adelaide.

It was the second doomed Angel Flight, after experienced volunteer pilot Don Kernot and passengers Julie and Jacinda Twigg, died in August 2011 when their plane crashed in country Victoria on a return flight from Melbourne to Nhill.

Jacinda, 15, was being treated for juvenile arthritis in Melbourne and was returning to her home near Nhill, when the plane came down in poor weather.

Angel Flight Australia is a charity that co-ordinates non-emergency flights to help rural Australians to access city medical services, providing almost 22,000 flights since 2003.

Prompted by the 2011 crash, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority toughened regulations for the sector in 2014, saying the status quo, where any aircraft could be used by any privately licensed pilot, was not “sound safety regulation”. Although it pushed for the charity to self-regulate — including overseeing pilot training, regular pilot checks and aircraft approvals — strong resistance from Angel Flight and its regional supporters prompted any proposed changes to be shelved.

CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said the discussion was now being revisited. “CASA is looking at the safety issues relating to community service flights in the wake of the tragic accident at Mount Gambier,” he said. “However, given the (Air Transport Safety Bureau’s) full analysis will not be available for some months, it is too early to comment on the accident itself or any factors that may have caused the accident.

“As a prudent regulator, CASA always reviews safety issues following serious accidents.”

Angel Flight chief executive Marjorie Pagani said the charity already sought stronger-than-­required CASA standards for its volunteer pilots, including at least 250 hours in command experience. Any changes to regulations on community service flights was the responsibility of CASA.

“We’re happy to co-operate with CASA and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau,” Ms ­Pagani said. “We have 3200 registered pilots; five to six times more than CASA requires for private pilots in a private flight, all documents are checked including current insurance and $10m public liability. We cant do anything but rely on CASA’s standards.’’

The Nhill pilot, Mr Kernot, had 6000 hours in command and Mr Gilbert had “well in excess” of 250 hours.

Ms Pagani said the Mr Gambier crash had not damaged Angel Flight’s reputation. “The support that we had from people in the community, from the passengers from pilots has been nothing short of amazing. The general tenor is this is a tragedy, but please don’t stop,’’ she said.

ATSB’s full report on the Mount Gambier crash is expected by the middle of next year.

Wondered why it was taking so long.
Here comes the knee jerk reaction.
The Australian might as well change the headline to "CASA to shut down charity flights"or perhaps "CASA to regulate Charity Flights out of business"

On the same day..."Airports Plead for protection"...from developers!!! Oh really!!! what about protecting the public from dilapidated aviation infrastructure...outrageous gouging by way fees, rents and parking. Their talking about residential development in areas surrounding the airports causing noise complaints.
Oh dear oh dear me, general aviation should be so lucky, the bloody developers own their airports, who protects them from inapropriate developments closing runways and taxiways and rent increases and lease terms designed to stifle any form of aviation development and force businesses to close, freeing up land to build more DFO's

[thorn bird]

The Go/No-Go Decision: High-Speed RTOs Are Fraught With Risk
Jul 21, 2017 Fred George | Business & Commercial Aviation
INSHARE

Funny how deja vu catches up to you. Only a few days ago I was having a discussion on the does and dont's of RTO's, then up pops this article in BCA magazine. Makes thought provoking reading.  

Dann Runik still gets chills when he remembers the rainy morning of March 1, 1978. He was in the cockpit of a DC-8 at Los Angeles International Airport as he watched Continental Flight 603, a heavily laden DC-10, lumber down Runway 6R on its takeoff roll. The heavy trijet was bound for Honolulu with 198 passengers and crew aboard.

Everything appeared normal to the DC-10’s flight crew as the aircraft accelerated toward its 156 KIAS V1 go/no-go decision speed. But when passing through 152 KIAS, the crew heard a loud “metallic bang” and the jetliner started to “quiver.” The captain felt it was unsafe to continue the takeoff, so 4 kt. below V1 he initiated a rejected takeoff (RTO).

Unknown to the crew, a recapped tire on the left main mount had thrown a tread and had blown out. This caused an adjacent tire to become overloaded, causing it to blow as well. Shrapnel from either or both of the two ruptured tires pierced a third tire on the left main mount and it, too, failed. The aircraft both yawed and sagged to the left as a result. The crew felt as though they were losing control of the airplane.

The captain stood on the brake pedals, pulled the throttles to idle and yanked up on the thrust reverser levers. At 159 KIAS — 3 kt. above V1, the 429,000-lb. jumbo began to decelerate but at a considerably slower rate than the crew had experienced during high-speed RTO simulator training. The device had not been programmed to simulate braking performance compromised by blown tires.

On that day, though, the wet runway surface combined with the failed tires to severely reduce stopping performance, particularly due to the upwind end of the runway being heavily coated with rubber skid marks from aircraft landing to the west and the lack of pavement grooving. In fact, the conditions at the end of the runway impeded braking action by as much as one-third, a condition the crew likened to sliding on ice.

With 2,000 ft. to go on the 10,885-ft. runway, the captain realized he couldn’t stop by the end of the runway. So, he steered the aircraft right of centerline in an effort to avoid hitting the approach light stanchions. As the aircraft rolled off the pavement at nearly 70 kt., the left main mount broke through the tarmac of the overrun and partially sheared off its mount, trailing behind the wing. The left fuel tank ruptured and nearly 6,000 gal. of jet fuel burst into fire, engulfing the left side of the aircraft. The left wing dug into the ground, the aircraft spun almost 90 deg., and it came to a stop some 664 ft. off the runway, or nearly 1 mi. from the point at which the captain initiated the RTO.

The cabin crew immediately began evacuating the aircraft. But the intense heat from the fire on the left side soon made most of the slides on the right side fail. And one of the right over-wing exit slides failed to deploy at all. Less than two-thirds of the aircraft occupants were able to use the escape slides before all of them failed. The rest had to jump off the aircraft.

Three crewmembers and 11 passengers suffered serious injuries during the egress. Local firefighters also were injured in the inferno. Two passengers later died of their burns and smoke inhalation.

Similarly, on Sept. 19, 2008, a Learjet 60’s RTO in Columbia, South Carolina, resulted in the deaths of both pilots and two passengers, and caused severe burns to the two surviving passengers. This accident also involved the captain attempting a high-speed abort after the aircraft suffered tire failure. Contributing to the accident were malfunctioning thrust reversers that allowed the aircraft to accelerate well above the V1 decision speed as the captain attempted to stop the aircraft.

A close review of the facts suggests an RTO was the wrong decision in both accidents.

High-Speed Abort Risks

The relative rarity of RTOs is one reason that most pilots are unprepared to make the most informed go/no-go decisions when trouble suddenly imperils an aircraft during takeoff. Runik, now FlightSafety International’s executive director, advanced training programs, notes that for every 3,000 commercial jet departures, only one results in an RTO. But a Boeing study notes that many RTOs go unreported, so the actual number may be closer to one in 2,000 takeoffs, or greater.

Unreported events may include slow-speed aborts early in the takeoff roll, occasioned by warning lights, out of trim conditions or the aircraft not having the appropriate high lift configuration. Considering the relative infrequency of RTOs, business aircraft pilots might only experience such an event once every 10 to 20 years. With such low probability, there’s a high risk of startle factor should such an event occur. There is ample reason to be prepared for such events, however, considering the potential risks associated with RTOs.

Of the reported RTOs, fewer than one in 1,000 resulted in an overrun accident or incident in large part because the decision to stop the aircraft was made well below the V1 decision speed. Notably, more than three-quarters of all RTOs are initiated at 80 KIAS or less. Such relatively slow-speed RTOs seldom cause problems. RTO accidents and incidents mainly come from the 2% of RTOs initiated above 120 KIAS. Notably, 55% of high-speed aborts were initiated above V1. Of those, 79% resulted in fatalities or incidents.

You’re only likely to suffer an accident or incident from an RTO about once in every 4.5 million departures, according to FAA statistics. But the risks associated with high-speed RTOs were plenty sufficient to cause Runik and FlightSafety to team with Randy Gaston, Gulfstream Aerospace’s recently retired vice president, flight operations, to attack the problem.

Historically, pilots have rejected takeoffs less than 18% of the time due to engine failure, according to the Netherlands Aerospace Center’s (NLR) Air Transport Safety Institute. The other four-fifths were due to blown tires, warning lights or other indications. However, less than half of those RTOs were warranted. And when pilots made the decision to continue the takeoff despite such abnormal indications, none of those “go” decisions resulted in accidents or incidents, according to FlightSafety’s research.

“There’s an overall lack in evidence-based training based on examining FOQA [flight operational quality assurance] data, NTSB accident reports and ASRS [NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System] incidents. It was Randy’s idea of teaching pilots how to make go/no-go decisions,” says Runik.

At first Runik balked. Gaston responds, “Oh sure. It’s too difficult. It’s too political. But since you’re carping about it, you’re the one to do it.”

Runik says that most pilots are accustomed to making simple balanced field length go/no-go decisions, where the accelerate-go and accelerate-stop distances are equal at the V1 speed. That may suffice for most simulator training scenarios, but conditions are far more complex in real life. It would be valuable to look separately at accelerate-go and accelerate-stop distances, if the aircraft manufacturer were to provide the data. Instead of using a single V1 decision speed, it’s preferable to look at V1min, which is the slowest speed at which a one-engine-inoperative (OEI) takeoff may be continued and which will enable the aircraft to reach the V2 OEI takeoff safety speed and a 35-ft. screen height above a limited length runway. And then look at V1max, the highest speed at which the takeoff may be rejected that allows the aircraft to be stopped on the runway remaining. V1min is the go/no-go speed when runway length is critical. V1max is the go/no-go speed when runway length is not a
factor.

However, very few general aviation aircraft manufacturers provide separate accelerate-go and accelerate-stop performance data, let alone the computational tools to enable pilots to use the data effectively to boost takeoff safety margins.

Traditional simulator training also doesn’t factor in runway slope, non-uniform traction conditions along the runways, obstacle and terrain hazards in the overrun areas, and rubber deposits near touchdown zones that, when wet, can be nearly as slippery as black ice, according to Runik. Traditional simulator training also doesn’t include sudden runway incursions by other aircraft, vehicles or animals.

A plethora of such factors made it difficult for Runik and Gaston to come up with hard and fast rules that covered all decisions that might be covered by the proposed FlightSafety go/no-go decision takeoff safety training program. Yet, they determined that pilots had been aborting takeoffs for several reasons that weren’t critical, decisions that potentially put the aircraft and all aboard at risk.

For example, some Gulfstreams have as many as 42 red warning messages that could pop up on the crew alerting system screen. Few of the alerts require rejecting the takeoff. Most of those abnormalities could be handled in the air just as safely as when on the ground. A takeoff trim configuration warning might pop up at high speed during the takeoff roll as air loads increase on control surfaces. And it’s highly unlikely that a pitch trim runaway will occur unless it’s triggered by a pilot pitch-trim switch input. Such spurious warnings can cause pilots to abort takeoffs for non-safety-of-flight alerts.

In fact, a Boeing study determined that in 55% of all RTOs in jetliners, the result might have been an uneventful landing had the takeoff been continued.

After Runik and Gaston had discussed several scenarios, though, they came up with three valid reasons to reject takeoff: (1) loss of directional control, (2) engine failure and (3) safety of flight.

Loss of directional control leads the list because it can be a clear-cut reason to keep the aircraft on the ground. Runik cautions, though, that a sudden yaw at high speed may be due to a tire failure, an animal strike or degraded nosewheel steering that may be countered by prompt and assertive control inputs. However, depending upon aircraft speed, stopping distance available, runway condition and slope, and other factors, the go/no-go decision may not be clear-cut.

The decision to reject a takeoff due to engine failure also isn’t necessarily as clear as it might seem. A typical civil jetliner accelerates at 3 to 6 kt. per second. And most business jets, having stronger thrust-to-weight ratios, accelerate considerably faster. It can take 2 to 4 sec. to recognize, call out and initiate the RTO, thus the aircraft may accelerate as much as 10 to 20 kt., or more, before the RTO is initiated. This can result in an abort above V1.

The Flight Safety Foundation’s Mark Lacagnina says that V1 should be reworded “takeoff action speed” rather than “takeoff decision speed.” The decision to reject the takeoff should be made long before reaching the V1 takeoff action speed, the point at which deceleration for the abort is begun. Lacagnina, however, isn’t getting much traction in the aviation industry or airworthiness authorities for that alteration.

Rejecting takeoff because of safety of flight is perhaps the fuzziest of decisions because it encompasses so many rare, but potentially fatal, risks. Among them are high-speed aborts that may be required due to sudden runway incursions by other aircraft, large animals or vehicles.

Advanced RTO Go/No-Go Course

FlightSafety International and Gulfstream have introduced a new RTO training course for large-cabin Gulfstream aircraft. In parallel, Gulfstream has modified its recommended SOPs for flight crew briefings and making more informed go/no-go decisions. The training organization is embracing this philosophy and incorporating it into the Pilot Training Handbooks for all Gulfstream models.

The 4-hr. RTO course exposes each crewmember to 18 different V1 go/no-go decision scenarios, requiring the flight crew to either continue or reject the takeoff. Go decisions provide additional training for pilots to fly their aircraft in high-stress, emergency situations when they must guide the aircraft to a successful emergency landing. Previous simulator training hasn’t exposed pilots to such urgent emergency scenarios in which pilots have to fly their aircraft back to the departure or divert airports with a high level of aggressiveness to achieve a successful outcome. The training course provides each pilot with the opportunity to practice multiple emergency return scenarios to proficiency.

The joint venture with Gulfstream proved so successful that FlightSafety has entered into a similar arrangement with Dassault Falcon Jet to offer an RTO training course for Falcon 900EX and 2000EX/LX/LXS EASy aircraft. Offered at its Dallas and Paris Le Bourget centers, the program expands upon the pre-takeoff safety briefings set forth in Dassault’s Crew Operational Documentation for Dassault Easy Vol. 2 (CODDE 2) publication. Similar to the Gulfstream course, the Falcon program enables pilots to expand their knowledge and enhance skills to boost safety margins during this critical phase of flight.

The training outfit next will offer the program for the Embraer Lineage 1000, then the Legacy 450 and 500. Similar programs for Textron’s King Air 200, 250 and 350 turboprops are under consideration.

Regardless of aircraft type, the same factors go into go/no-go decision making, assuming the aircraft has certified OEI takeoff performance capabilities.

“Pilots need to plan ahead, consider what actually can trigger a red warning light,” says Gaston. “A minor integrated avionics malfunction, for instance, might trigger multiple spurious red CAS messages. And trim systems don’t just run away on their own. So, think about what you really would abort for.”

Consider the actual conditions at the departure airport. Imagine, for instance, you’re departing 7,838-ft. MSL Aspen’s Runway 33, an 8,000-ft. strip with a 2% downslope. Assume it’s dusted with fresh snow. Off the departure end, the terrain quickly plunges down to the bed of the Roaring Fork River. Running off the end of the runway after an RTO is fraught with risk. Gaston notes that the accelerate-stop distances published in most business jet flight manuals don’t include deceleration provided by thrust reversers. So, don’t count on help from the TRs during a high-speed RTO.

FlightSafety International is one of the first general-aviation training firms to offer such training. The instruction involves the type of high-level decision-making knowledge, preparation and planning that can save lives when making go/no-go decisions.

[thorn bird]

Interesting Article from BCA magazine. Maybe not Australian orientated, but some good advice there. Also sets the mind to a few comparisons between there in the real world and here in La La land.

Explaining Teterboro’s ‘Non-Circling, Circling Approach’
Sep 13, 2017 James Albright | Business & Commercial Aviation

This article, originally published on August 21, appears in the September 2017 issue of Business & Commercial Aviation with the title “TEB’s ‘Non-Circling, Circling Approach.’”

[/url]Editor’s note: On May 15, 2017, a Learjet 35A crashed on approach to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, killing both pilots, the only persons aboard.  Winds at the time were reported as 320 at 16 kt. gusting to 32 and the aircraft had been cleared for the ILS Runway 6, circle to land Runway 1. While the NTSB’s final report isn’t expected until sometime next year, a review of procedural considerations under such conditions can help ensure flight safety. 
                                                                       
When is a circling approach not a circling approach? If you are in the simulator flying the Memphis (Tennessee) International Airport (KMEM) Localizer to Runway 27, chances are you will be circling to Runway 18R and will be expected to do so at minimums. In a Category D aircraft, you will be evaluated on your ability to keep the airplane at the 1,020-ft. Minimum Descent Altitude (MDA), which is just 679 ft. above the landing surface, and within 2.25 sm of the airport or risk losing sight. You are circling.


A Gulfstream GIV lands on Runway 24 at Teterboro. Credit: James Albright/BCA


Now, let’s say you are in your airplane on a clear day with great visibility. In fact, the only blemish on this otherwise perfect day for flying is that the winds are 340/24G40. At Teterboro Airport, New Jersey (KTEB), this means you will be flying the ILS to Runway 6, circle to Runway 1, using a left base with an overshooting wind. You can’t fly a straight-in because that will impact the heavy traffic pattern at Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey (KEWR). You can’t overfly the airport for a more desirable right base into the wind, because Teterboro is just too busy. New York Approach Control and Teterboro Tower both use the same terminology: “Cleared the ILS Runway 6, circle to 1.” So you are circling, right?
It depends on what you mean by “circling,” and your understanding of the terminology makes all the difference. Of course, Teterboro is not unique when it comes to the need to circle in visual meteorological conditions (VMC), but its extremely high traffic density and proximity to several major New York City area airports probably makes it the most challenging example. Once you understand what it is you are expected to do, you can more safely maneuver your aircraft in this difficult airspace. Your success depends on how well you understand yourself, your aircraft and the airport. Only then can you guarantee success.  


A virtual tower Credit: NASA


But first: What exactly does “circling” mean?
Understanding the Terminology
The Pilot/Controller Glossary tells us that the “circle-to-land” maneuver is “initiated by the pilot to align the aircraft with a runway for landing when a straight-in landing from an instrument approach is not possible or is not desirable. At tower-controlled airports, this maneuver is made only after ATC authorization has been obtained and the pilot has established required visual reference to the airport.” In the very next entry, the Glossary tells us that the terminology “Circle to Runway [runway number]” is “used by ATC to inform the pilot that he/she must circle to land because the runway in use is other than the runway aligned with the instrument approach procedure.” In both cases, we pilots are led to believe this is part of the instrument procedure and because of the way we are trained, that telegraphs specific procedures that are probably not air traffic control’s intent.


The Teterboro ILS or LOC RWY 6, FAA AL-890 25 May 2017


Most professional, instrument-rated pilots are checked regularly using the standards listed in the FAA’s Airline Transport Pilot and Aircraft Type Rating Practical Test Standards for Airplane (FAA-S-8081-5F). These check rides include circling approaches that hammer home the need to:
(1) Descend at a rate “that ensures arrival at the MDA at, or prior to, a point from which a normal circle-to-land maneuver can be accomplished.”
(2) Avoid “exceeding the visibility criteria until in a position from which a descent to a normal landing can be made.”
(3) “Maintain the desired altitude within -0, +100 ft.”
(4) Maintain “airspeed/V-speed within +/-5 kt.”
In the pilot’s mind, that is what “circling” is all about. But is that the controller’s intent?  

The perfect case to illustrate this dichotomy of intent versus perceived intent is the Teterboro ILS Runway 6, circle to Runway 1 instruction that the Lear 35 pilots were given in May. When the winds dictate landings on Runway 1, which does not have an instrument approach, ATC will normally instruct pilots to shoot the ILS to Runway 6, “circle zero one,” “circle at TORBY” or “after TORBY enter the left base Runway 1.” Even if the term “circle” isn’t used, the pilot may perceive this as a circling maneuver. If this instruction was given during a simulator check ride, the weather would be reduced to minimums and the pilot would be expected to begin maneuvering no earlier than the visibility minimums. A Category D aircraft, for example, would begin maneuvering when within 2.25 sm, which is only 2.17 nm.


Pilot Jon Becker examines the leading edge of his Challenger 604 before a flight to Teterboro Credit: James Albright/BCA


Tower will usually instruct aircraft to begin their maneuver no earlier than TORBY, but sometimes this instruction is understood and not stated.  TORBY is 3.8 nm from the end of Runway 6, well outside the visibility minimum on the approach plate for even the highest approach category. In fact, TORBY is also outside approach circling radii given in the U.S. Standard for Terminal Instrument Procedures (TERPS) or the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM). This is clearly not the same circle-to-land maneuver envisioned by the pilot from his or her training experiences.
The controller assumes the pilot knows how to best maneuver his or her aircraft from one runway to the next and doesn’t presume to tell the pilot how to fly. The pilot may not correctly understand the controller’s intent, but that’s usually manageable and experience with the approach will reduce any misunderstandings. However, there are two more hurdles to overcome before understanding how to circle at any given airport. The pilot must first understand his or her own capability and then must understand the airplane’s strengths and weaknesses. Only then can the pilot hope to accomplish the “non-circle, circle.”
Understanding the Pilot
As a young U.S. Air Force pilot, one of my least favorite Military Airlift Command regulations was called the “You can’t go unless you’ve been” rule. It meant at least one pilot in the cockpit had to be familiar with the destination or the crew could not go. As I gained experience with one challenging airport after another, I started to appreciate the value of “local knowledge.”
As business pilots, we don’t have this luxury and are often expected to go anywhere, anytime without airport-specific training. Fortunately, that  “anywhere, anytime” expectation is rarely a problem for us. If you are flying a 3-deg. ILS to 6,000 ft. or more of good, hard asphalt, what can possibly go wrong?  
To the uninitiated, Teterboro would seem to be nothing too challenging. It isn’t in mountainous terrain. It has two long runways, a full-time tower and some of the best air traffic controllers in the business. If you are well practiced at operating in a dense IFR environment, Teterboro is rarely more challenging than flying into and out of Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX) or Chicago O’Hare International Airport (KORD).  But if the winds dictate a landing on Runway 1 or 24, the game changes entirely. Until you’ve experienced both of those runways on a windy day, you would be wise to talk to someone who has and perhaps try those approaches in a simulator first. But even if you are a Teterboro expert, you need to be an expert with your aircraft, too.
Understanding the Aircraft
Just as our training experiences can misshape how we interpret circle-to-land instructions, our early flight training may give us a false idea about airspeed margins when maneuvering. In the simulator, we practice all manner of stalls but recover at the first sign of a stall, which is usually provided by the stick shaker. During the recovery, the airplane can get a little unruly but is generally controllable. However, we rarely, if ever, experience a full aerodynamic stall in the simulator because the aircraft we fly aren’t approved for such stalls. That’s why shakers, nudgers, pushers and other warning devices are installed.  
If we did experience a full aerodynamic stall in flight, we may be surprised to find that not all aircraft remain perfectly controllable, may not stall wings level, or may not produce a self-correcting pitch down. Now this kind of experience isn’t really needed provided we ensure we never stall the airplane. We are given a margin above the stall of course, but that margin isn’t always enough.
Transport category aircraft must have a reference landing speed (Vref) at least 23% above reference stall speed (Vsro), the speed at which the airplane stalls in 1-G flight. That margin would seem to be adequate under most conditions, but is it?
We are trained early in our careers to realize that stall speeds go up with increased aircraft weight and bank angle. But there is an additional element that can change the stall speed even at equal weights and bank angles, and this element comes into play during a circling maneuver. The element in question is the load factor on the wing, also known as the “G load.”  
 
Stall Speed at X G’s=Stall Speed at 1G√X
 
From our primary aircraft training we associate G loads with bank angle and know a 60-deg. level turn produces a load factor of 2 Gs. But you can experience 2 Gs with much less bank angle by simply pulling back on the yoke. Even a moderate amount of turbulence can add to your load factor. If this happens to you while maneuvering to land, your stall speed can sneak up on you.
Let’s say your aircraft stalls at 100 kt. at a given weight, landing configuration and environment when in 1-G flight. If your Vref is based on 1.23 Vsro, you will be at 123 kt. and have a healthy margin above the stall. Now let’s throw in a level turn.
 
Bank Adjusted Load Factor=1/cos [(bank angle)] 
 
As long as we keep our bank angle to less than 30 deg. the load factor is almost negligible, only 1.15 G.  But now our stall speed is 107 kt., leaving us with only a 7-kt. margin. If a gust of wind or perhaps a slight overshoot causes our bank angle to increase, so too, will our load factor. A 36-deg. bank angle in a level turn brings our example airplane to a stall. If we are in a descending turn and have “unloaded” the wing we get some of that margin back. But if we are pulling back harder to tighten the turn, even a 30-deg. bank angle can result in a stall.
Old-timers will tell you they used to add 5 kt. “for the kids” and, on a really gusty day, they would add another 5 kt. for the family dog. Many aircraft today require we add half the steady wind plus the full gust increment but at least 5 kt. and at most 20 kt. A 24-kt. wind gusting to 40 kt., for example, requires the full additive of 20 kt. (One half of 24 is 12, and the gust increment is 16.) Armed with such an additive, our example airplane will fly the circle-to-land maneuver at 143 kt. That airspeed pad will protect the airplane against load factors up to 2 Gs, which would allow for up to 60 deg. of bank in level flight. If the air is turbulent, however, the 2 Gs can be realized at much lower bank angles.
Cosines and square roots are not something most pilots want to contemplate with a handful of airplane while aiming for a small patch of concrete or asphalt. But the math serves to remind us that our margin above the stall isn’t as large as we think, especially with a bank angle and a gusty wind thrown in.  
Related
Approach Impossible: ‘Chair Flying’ to Minimums or Not at All
Accidents in Brief: Bombardier Learjet 35A at Teterboro and Selected Other Accidents from May 2017
Circling Approach Survival Guide
Yet, there is another item of aircraft performance we should understand but may never get to experience. When your aircraft stalls, how does it behave?
Most of us learn aircraft stall behavior in small trainers where exceeding the wing’s critical angle of attack (AOA) results in some buffeting over the tail and perhaps a wings-level drop of the nose. Very few transport category aircraft permit full stall training and even in a full-motion simulator training is limited to the “approach to stall,” that point where electronic stall warning systems are activated.  
These factors can instill in some pilots the belief that a full stall in a large business jet is no worse than in a basic trainer. This might be true. But it may be more likely that the larger aircraft can drop a wing, pitch up or even remain in the same attitude while picking up a large sink rate. Some business jets can snap into a roll faster than the pilot can react. But aircraft manufacturers don’t make it a habit of publicizing any adverse behavior. It is up to pilots to understand that their airplane may not behave kindly in a stall, making the need to avoid the stall in the first place that much more important.
OK, we get it. Stalling a transport category aircraft is a bad idea and circle-to-land maneuvering can raise stall speeds high enough to reduce or eliminate stall margins. So how do we avoid putting our aircraft into what could be an unrecoverable flight attitude? It is easy, if you really understand what it takes to fly a stable approach off a circling approach.
Understanding the Stable Approach
Just about everyone these days preaches the need for a stable approach and just about everyone defines a stable approach as being configured and in a landing attitude, on speed, on glidepath and on centerline no later than 500 ft. above the runway. But what is lost on many people is that flying a stable approach off a 3-deg. glidepath takes distance, 1.57 nm to be exact.


Example stable approach flown at 130 KCAS Credit: James Albright/BCA


If you are targeting a touchdown 1,000 ft. down the runway — that comes to 0.17 nm — that means you should plan to be at 500 ft. above the touchdown zone elevation when 1.57 – 0.17 = 1.4 nm from the end of the runway. But not only at that altitude but also on speed, on centerline, wings level and fully configured to land.  (Getting there while still in 30 deg. of bank doesn’t count.)
A steeper glidepath shortens the distance. A 3.5-deg. glidepath, for example, brings you to 500 ft. at 1.35 nm. But generally speaking, shooting for 500 ft. when 1.4 nm from the end of the runway serves as a good rule of thumb.
There is a school of thought that says we can lower our stabilized approach altitude to 300 ft. when in good weather and flying a visual traffic pattern or circling approach. You may have even flown such a maneuver expertly at your home airport under normal conditions. But can you do that at every airport under every wind condition you feel comfortable with? I think an hour in a simulator with a variety of crosswinds should dispel the notion that 300 ft. is enough. I don’t think it is. There is no better place to demonstrate the need for a 500-ft. stabilized approach height than the busiest business aviation airport of all: Teterboro.
Understanding the Airport: Teterboro as the Perfect Example
Teterboro provides two perfect examples of non-circle, circling approaches because of its unique location wedged underneath the Newark Liberty International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, New York (KLGA) flight paths. The controllers are experts at packing what seems to be an infinite number of airplanes into what is most definitely a finite amount of airspace.  

The flow of business and private aircraft into Teterboro is staggering. In calendar year 2016, for example, the airport averaged 485 takeoffs and landings per day, despite what can often be weather that could leave other airports unable to cope. Pilots often breathe a sigh of relief when the ATIS reports landings to Runways 6 or 19, knowing they will have an ILS guiding them and a predictable chain of aircraft ahead and behind them. But if the winds or New York area traffic flow require landings to Runway 1 or 24, cockpit pulse rates tend to quicken.
ILS Runway 6, Circle to Runway 1
Let’s look at a series of “circling” approaches coming off the ILS Runway 6 followed by a right turn to base and ending with a left turn onto final for Runway 1. We’ll do this for a no-wind situation as well as a wind of 340/16G30. In my Gulfstream G450, that wind requires a 20-kt. additive, using half the steady wind plus the full gust increment but no less than five or greater than 20. With a typical Vref of 130, that means I will be flying at 150 kt.

The view after turning right from the ILS 06 at Teterboro Credit: James Albright/BCA


A fundamental requirement for understanding aircraft performance in a circling approach is the concept of turn radius. You can estimate your aircraft’s 25-deg. bank angle turn radius by dividing your speed in miles per minute by three. (For more about this, see “Approach Impossible,” BCA, May 2017, page 40). Flying at 150 kt. (2.5 nm/min.) gives you a turn radius of about 0.83 nm.
Now that we have our turn radius, we are left with the decision of where to aim when setting up our base to Runway 1. We will probably be instructed, “After TORBY circle to Runway 1.” Because TORBY is 3.8 nm from Runway 6, we may be tempted to delay our turn. But once we turn right to set up for the left base, we will see three landmarks that could complicate our decision-making.  
The ILS Runway 6, circle to Runway 1 makes for a good test to see if a pilot really understands (or believes) in stable approaches. I’ve met many pilots who claim you need to turn from the ILS Runway 6 to a base to Runway 1 by aiming inside one of three landmarks: the stadium (“MetLife” or “Giant” stadium, depending on your age), Xanadu (also known as American Dream Meadowlands) or the radio towers just outside. To some pilots, a turn outside these landmarks shows you are of “lesser stock.”


The Teterboro ILS 06 Ccrcle to 01, no wind, unstable approach Credit: Images: Google Earth, James Albright/BCA

These pilots may argue that you need to turn inside the stadium because of nationwide TFR 4/3621, which prohibits flying within 3 nm of a stadium having a seating capacity of 30,000 or more during certain games. But the TFR also exempts “those aircraft authorized by and in contact with ATC for operational or safety of flight purposes.”
Regardless of motivation, those pilots who attempt to circle inside the stadium will not be able roll out with enough distance to allow a 500-ft. stable approach, even on a calm wind day.
Starting the turn so as to maneuver just outside of the stadium, Xanadu and towers, you roll out exactly where you need to be for a stable approach, 1.57 nm from touchdown at 500 ft. above the runway.


The Teterboro ILS 06 circle to 01, 20-kt. wind, stable approach

Now what happens if we throw in a 20-kt. wind from the northwest? Our turn radius will be greatest with the wind at our back and that requires we begin our turn at TORBY if we still wish to roll out at 500 ft. for a stable approach to Runway 1. Starting our turn earlier allows us to avoid overflying MetLife Stadium, Xanadu and the towers and still roll out on final for a stable approach. Now, what if we still insist on flying inside the stadium?
It simply cannot be done. We will need to increase our bank angle, but even then we are likely to end up over the stadium and then it will be impossible to roll out on course. If you limit the bank angle to 45 deg. I think you might be able to roll out over the numbers at 80 ft. That is hardly a stable approach! The lesson is clear, when instructed to circle to Runway 1, you should start the turn so as to maneuver around MetLife Stadium and Xanadu. Delaying this turn will cost you a stable approach.
ILS Runway 19, Circle to Runway 24
The ILS Runway 19, circle to Runway 24 is easier in two respects but harder in two others. It is easier because you don’t have to worry about encroaching into Newark’s airspace and you don’t have to worry about overflying MetLife Stadium, Xanadu or those radio towers. But it is harder because you don’t have any good visual references and things happen much faster due to the proximity of both runway ends.  Depending on your avionics, there are techniques to help.
You are normally given clearance for the ILS Runway 19, circle to Runway 24, with a speed restriction until TUGGZ, which is 4.5 nm from the end of Runway 19. The point at which you should start maneuvering is hard to judge because the end of each runway is very near and the angle between them quite small. Generally speaking, for an airplane flying at 150 kt., starting your turn 3 mi. from the end of Runway 19 works with no winds. How do I know that?
I want to be rolled out no later than 1.57 nm from touchdown. The normal touchdown point is 1,000 ft. (0.17 nm) down the runway. Let’s subtract 0.17 from the 1.57 and say we want to roll out 1.4 nm from the end of the runway. Our two turns make up an “S-turn” and almost amount to two turn radii added, so that’s 0.83 + 0.83 = 1.66 nm. So 1.4 + 1.66 = 3.06, which is close enough to 3.0 to call it 3 nm. Drawing it to scale validates this.


The Teterboro ILS 19 circle to 24, no wind


What about a 20-kt. overshooting wind? You can compute that by understanding the entire air mass is moving 20 kt. to the east. Knowing that it takes time = (distance/velocity) = (4.5 nm) / (150 nm/hr.) = 0.03 hr. to fly from TUGGZ to the end of Runway 19, we can approximate our eastward lateral drift during that time to be distance = (velocity)(time) = (20 nm/hr.) (0.03 hr.) = 0.6 nm.


The Teterboro ILS 19 circle to 24, 20-kt. wind


Graphically, we see that starting the initial turn a half mile early seems to give us an extra half mile to line up on Runway 24 in time to make a stable approach. Easy? Well, knowing where to aim for your rollout is the issue here, just as it was for the ILS Runway 6, circle to Runway 1. Teterboro could make both of these procedures easier with charted visual flight procedures (CVFPs). Both runways seem to be perfect candidates for the CVFP defined in the AIM, Section 5-4-24. But until the day that happens, pilots can arm themselves with a few techniques.
Improving Your Non-Circling, Circling Approach Situational Awareness
The best way to improve your “circling” at Teterboro (or anywhere else) is to understand that you want to roll out 500 ft. above the landing surface about 1.5 mi. from touchdown. The best way to do that is to increase your situational awareness by any means possible. As with many things in aviation, the more toys you have in the cockpit the easier it becomes, but all you really need is an approach plate.  So here we go, from simplest to easiest, four techniques.

(1) Draw an extended centerline on the approach plate — Most approach plates will have some sort of scale on the side and you can measure 1.5 mi. and draw a line on the extended final of your landing runway. From there imagine the turn radius and you will have an idea of when your turn needs to be made. Keep in mind that many real-world circling approaches cannot be made to a stable final approach to keep within the posted visibility minimums. (That might be your best clue that you don’t want to circle at minimums.)
(2) Draw an extended centerline using the FMS — Some avionics suites will allow you to extend the runway centerline with a few keystrokes. If you size the display so as to have a meaningful range mark, you can shoot for the appropriate final. If, for example, you have a 3-mi. range ring, you shoot for half that distance from touchdown.  If the runway is drawn to scale, you can use it to visualize a rollout point. In the example shown, the runway is 1 mi. long so you want to aim a runway and a half away. On other aircraft, the ILS “feather” has a fixed scale and can also be used to judge distance.
(3) Size the display of a moving map with an aircraft symbol so as to provide a visual base turn depiction — In our KTEB ILS Runway 6, circle to Runway 1 example, we can zoom into the approach plate and realize the distance between TORBY and Runway 6 is 3.8 nm. We should be shooting to roll out on final for Runway 1 that is about half that distance from touchdown. (Some simulator instructors will call this cheating. In the box that might be the case. But in real life this is called using all the tools available to keep things safe.)
(4) Use synthetic vision — Some synthetic vision setups provide range marks from the landing runways, in which case you need only shoot for a rollout providing at least beyond the 1 and 2 nm marks.


Gulfstream G450 synthetic vision showing right base looking at 4, 5, and 6 mi. to go markers
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The Key to Success: Planning and Knowing When to ‘Bail’
Circling in a simulator or at an airport where you aren’t competing with other airplanes in a long line of arrivals and departures can seem relatively easy compared to the Teterboro non-circle, circling approach. The same can be said at a few other airports in the country where not only do you have to fly a demanding visual approach, but you need to do so while meshing with other aircraft. But Teterboro can be the most challenging of all because of its proximity to several other very busy airports.

Both of these approaches are perfectly safe and are routinely accomplished by hundreds of pilots every year, even in very strong and gusty wind conditions. Most of these pilots are veterans at this kind of thing and experience really does help. If you are faced with your first trip to Teterboro, you would be well-served to try both approaches in a simulator first. But even the most seasoned Teterboro veteran needs to know when to say no to these procedures.

On May 15, 2017, I was scheduled to fly to Teterboro, the closest airport to my passenger’s meeting in New York City. The winds were forecast to be 340/25G40 all day long. I knew this would require an approach to Runway 6, circle to Runway 1. While the winds were just below my G450’s maximum demonstrated crosswind value, I knew the overshooting wind would push me to my limits as a pilot. I elected to use Runway 34 at Westchester County Airport, New York (KHPN) instead.

But what if you find yourself about to circle for a runway where the winds have suddenly changed and your ability to negotiate the turn is in doubt? Or perhaps you simply forgot to turn as early as needed?  You could find yourself at your maximum bank angle with your target runway slipping away from you. What then? The tower controller has undoubtedly seen this before and will understand, especially if you make it clear what is happening. “I overshot the runway, I need to go around.” If you think another try with a longer final would work, say so. But if you think the conditions are just too taxing for man and machine, ask for a different approach or divert. Your confession can make life easier for the rest of us. They may change the active runway or your words can warn the next pilot not to attempt the maneuver. That next pilot could be me; so let me say “thanks” in advance. 

This article, though very thought provoking but perhaps not entirely relevant to the Australian scene, to me, throws up some very interesting comparisons between here versus there.
Our can't do attitude, compared with their can do attitude for starters.

Could a Teterboro even exist in Australia?

When you look at the draft traffic management plan for the new Sydney West airport, it swallows up almost the entire Sydney basin and puts serious doubt on the viability of Bankstown and Camden.

You have to wonder how Teterboro manages.

I understand the processes used to formulate traffic management in Australia are based on algorithms devised in the 1940'ies.

Using these processes to assess risk, makes it highly likely that an aircraft enroute from Sydney to Melbourne might collide with an aircraft enroute from Chicago to New York, yet our so called experts, so resistant to chance, continue with these farcical processes, efficiency?They don't know the meaning of the word.

[thorn bird]

With his usual wit and biting sarcasm our old mate Clinton McKenzie nails it with an Oh so apt definition of CAsA and its regulatory processes.

From Wikipedia:
Quote:
Noble cause corruption is corruption caused by the adherence to a teleological ethical system, suggesting that people will use unethical or illegal means to attain desirable goals, a result which appears to benefit the greater good. Where traditional corruption is defined by personal gain, noble cause corruptions[sic] forms when someone is convinced of their righteousness, and will do anything within their powers to achieve the desired result. An example of noble cause corruption is police misconduct "committed in the name of good ends" or neglect of due process through “a moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live."
Conditions for such corruption usually occur where individuals feel no administrative accountability, lack morale and leadership, and lose faith in the criminal justice system. These conditions can be compounded by arrogance and weak supervision.

His submission to a CAsA inquiry (see link below) Excellent research, combined with his undeniable brilliant analysis provides us with just why things are so screwed up in the Australian aviation world. His submission should be required reading, not just for Industry participants, but all CAsA staff and politicians.

https://www.casa.gov.au/file/183126/down...n=p6kNtcdK

[thorn bird]

Thought provoking??

Time For Innovation: Grandfatherly Flying Is So Yesterday

Sep 22, 2017 William Garvey  | Business & Commercial Aviation

This year my car turned 17, making it a senior four-wheeled citizen since the median for flivvers is less than 10. However, the average age of a general aviation aircraft today is roughly 40 years. Think about that for a moment. An ancient iPhone is one purchased way back in 2014. Sofa beds get tossed after five years‘ worth of guests, kids and cats. A giant panda is gone after 20. And cars are deemed “classic” at 25. So, that a fleet of mobile machinery now averages two score — and many are a lot older than that — is quite a testament to durability and upkeep.

But there are other reasons for that impressive seniority. Today I pulled BCA’s 1987 Purchase Planning Handbook from the shelf (yes, I’m a bit of a hoarder), and found these stats for the then-new Beech Bonanza A36: seating — 1+4/5; engine — 300 hp; max ramp weight — 3,663 lb.; max speed — 176 kt. Compare those numbers with the G36 Bonanza in our 2017 Handbook: seating — 1+4/5; engine — 300 hp; max ramp weight — 3,663 lb.; high-speed cruise — 174 kt.

So, while the cockpit instrumentation has been markedly improved on the G model, the 2017 machine delivers almost exactly what its A model predecessor did back when Ronald Reagan was exhorting Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
Oh, and another point. The 1987 Bonanza sold for $263,000, which admittedly was a chunk of dough back then. But the 2017 version is listed at $815,000, which is, respectively, a whole lot bigger chunk. In fact, that’s double the rate of inflation.
The foregoing factors combined to move just 25 Bonanzas off the production line last year, one in which single-engine aircraft failed to break the 1,000 mark . . . for the eighth year running. So, the post-Recession general aviation recession vexingly continues. But there are some encouraging developments that could produce positive results.

My Aviation Week & Space Technology colleague John Croft notes, “The convergence of four factors — electric engine technology, powerful lithium-chemistry batteries, automatic control systems and flexible new regulations — is opening new ‘degrees of freedom’ in aircraft design.”

FLEXIBLE NEW REGULATIONS??..compared with CAsA's innovative industry destroying Part 61and Part 66 which are about as flexible as a brick.

Arguably of those, the key is regulatory, specifically the new FAR Part 23, which contains the airworthiness standards for light aircraft.

THE KEY IS REGULATORY??..Well fancy that

The FAA is supposed to review all its major regulatory sections every decade. However, by the time it got around to eyeballing Part 23 in the early 2000s, 30 years had passed. And when the review began, the discussions and areas of interest were based on how things had always been. Greg Bowles, who was the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s participant, thought the process was ripe for radical change. As it happened, the FAA agreed.

Ripe for change? Yep we saw that thirty years ago, even threw half a billion dollars at the mission of simplifying our rules only to be thwarted by CAsA,s unions and incompetent clowns in control of the iron ring

The process that followed was deliberate and slow, but the results are formidable. In the rewrite of Part 23, which came into effect at the end of August, the rules are prescriptive rather than performance based, allowing manufacturers to use consensus standards to show compliance. The European Aviation Safety Agency has adopted light plane rules that are virtually identical, and other aviation regulatory bodies are expected to follow suit, which was one of the goals of the process.

Jeez, even the Europeans got on board, recognising their reg's, which we were supposed to adopt, wrecked their GA industry

According to Bowles, now GAMA’s vice president for global innovation and policy, the new approach enables manufacturers to “actually design and innovate and put the cool stuff in the field.”

That “stuff” is for others to imagine and bring to the fore but could conceivably range from electric and hybrid-electric power to pilotless aircraft to who knows what? The hope is that by adapting rapidly evolving technology to general aviation, prices and complexity will diminish, while safety and general appeal increase. All of those would be welcome developments considering the steady decline of the pilot population and apparent lack of interest in general aviation by millennials in general.

Supposedly this is a generation that doesn’t drive, let alone own cars. So, they’re not likely to embrace expensive, complex flying machines designed when their grandfathers were young. “That’s why this stuff is so important,” says Bowles.

We’ll see. As he says, “Now it’s in our hands.” Or not in any hands.

Barry Justice, the president and CEO of Corporate Aviation Analysis & Planning Inc., a well-regarded business aviation consultancy, who is a former director of flight ops for a Fortune 100 outfit, says there’s heavy investing ongoing to advance flight control technology quickly and business aviation is involved.

He reports that in the past two years, he knows of three flight department managers who were informed that their companies — two insurance providers and one utility — were buying unmanned aerial vehicles and that “The drones now report to you.” More will follow that pattern; it makes sense.

As for flying in pilotless urban Ubers, we’ll see. Justice queried associates and got a Never! response. But he says, if proven safe, he’d hop aboard. As for me, I’d consider trading in my M Coupe only after Google releases its 2,000th FAA-certificated passenger drone.

Any chance this forward thinking change happening in OZ?
Not a chance. Noble cause corruption will see to that.

[thorn bird]

More Than 250 Business Aircraft Operators Embrace A Version Of FOQA
Sep 22, 2017
Fred George | Business & Commercial Aviation

This article appears in the October 2017 issue of Business & Commercial Aviation with the title “FOQA Comes of Age.”

Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) programs earned widespread acceptance among airlines even before the turn of this century, but most business aviation operators were cool to the concept as late as a decade ago.

Air carriers embraced FOQA because it uses absolute metrics rather than imperfect memory to identify and quantify errors and threats. Historical human-based systems, such as Aviation Safety Action Programs (ASAPs) used at many airlines or NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) depend upon the willingness and ability of pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, dispatchers and air traffic controllers to document anomalies. In some cases, would-be reporters may not notice anything amiss at all because of on-the-job distractions. FOQA, in contrast, automatically collects operational parameters in real time and makes the data available for objective evaluation. It doesn’t have an ego. It never gets distracted, never frets. It’s always on duty.

 
A key technology to FOQA and “corporate,” or C-FOQA, is a multiple-channel quick access recorder (QAR) aboard the aircraft to monitor and precisely record dozens, or even hundreds, of parameters pertaining to the flight. The data then is downloaded for analysis.

C-FOQA makes it possible for business aircraft operators to detect, verify and quantify operational minor deviations before they develop into FAR violations, incidents or accidents. It also enables them to spot aircraft engine and systems malfunctions and correct them before they ground aircraft. The FOQA system actually provides insights into the entire spectrum of flight operations, including aircraft, crews, maintenance, weather factors, specific arrival and departure procedures, runway hazards and SOPs that need revision.

In essence, FOQA is the canary in the coal mine, as the late John Wiley wrote in “C-FOQA:  Has Its Time Arrived?” (BCA, June 2007). It warns operators of potentially hazardous or lethal conditions before they truly menace. Most importantly, it breaks the historical aviation “tombstone” model of “Fly. Crash. Investigate. Then fix.”

Research by the Flight Safety Foundation revealed that for every fatal accident, there were 10 major non-fatal accidents, 30 serious incidents, 200 minor incidents, 600 abnormal events and 5,000 flights. FOQA doesn’t wait for incidents or accidents, let alone fatalities, to reveal problems. It identifies the potential risk factors in thousands of operations before they can lead to loss of life.

Corporate operators, nonetheless, had concerns about C-FOQA’s threat to privacy in spite of all the advantages demonstrated by the airlines’ use of the technology. C-FOQA was seen by many as a potential snitch to provide evidence for enforcement and punishment, wrote Wiley. He noted, though, that the airlines pushed for, and succeeded in obtaining, confidentiality guarantees. This protected flight crews from the prying eyes of the media, overzealous regulators and trial attorneys. Such privacy protections shield pilots from snoops. But as with other safety reporting systems, airline FOQA’s confidentiality guarantee only covers minor, inadvertent deviations and not intentional violations or gross negligence.

C-FOQA also has robust privacy protections. GE Aviation’s C-FOQA Centerline division (formerly Austin Digital) worked with Altria’s and Pfizer’s flight departments to start proof-of-concept programs that incorporated all the essential FOQA controls used by the airlines, including critical privacy protections.

Because of the potential legal ramifications of subpoenaing FOQA data, Vulcan Aviation’s legal team was “all atwitter” when the flight department first considered participating, says Frank Raymond, the organization’s aviation safety manager. But Raymond was confident in Austin Digital (now GE Aviation) physically securing and absolutely protecting the data. In his “view of the world,’ he was more concerned about his own department being subpoenaed in a legal dispute.

“We wanted to be in a better position to respond by saying we’re voluntarily analyzing our own data rather than waiting to say ‘Yes we’re looking, but we’ve buried our heads in sand.’ We didn’t want to go on flying and hope we got lucky.”

Flight departments are increasingly buying into C-FOQA. During the past decade, GE Aviation has grown the program to include more than 250 operators and more than two dozen types of aircraft ranging from vintage Hawker 800s to BBJs. The fleet of C-FOQA Centerline-monitored aircraft has amassed more than 800,000 flight hours, says Shelby Balogh, GE Aviation’s senior director and analytics scientist.

“We’re able to use the data that’s already being generated by the aircraft to promote the fundamental objective of improving safety,” he said.
How It Works

There are four parts to C-FOQA. As noted, it starts with installing a QAR, which is essentially a second flight data recorder designed for easy data retrieval. Some new aircraft models come from the production line with standard provisions for QARs, but virtually all QAR installations require aftermarket STCs or Service Bulletins from the airframe manufacturer.

For newer generation aircraft with fully integrated avionics systems from Garmin, Honeywell and Rockwell Collins, among others, the boxes may cost as little as $12,000 to $15,000, plus installation.





Installing QARs in older aircraft can pose major challenges, especially if they weren’t originally designed to accommodate forensic flight data recorders. However, it may be possible to install a limited function QAR that monitors FMS, air data and engine parameters, and perhaps also aircraft attitude, trim, flap and gear positions, along with weight on wheels. Eclipse 500 aircraft, for example, came standard from the Albuquerque factory with limited function QARs.

The cost of retrofitting a QAR to older aircraft goes up sharply with the number of parameters monitored by the QAR and the fewer the number of candidate aircraft in the existing fleet. In some cases, the cost of retrofitting a QAR system may exceed $100,000. Excessive cost often deters such retrofitting.

Timely and secure data retrieval and transmission is the second step of the process. Some aircraft use 4G wireless devices, enabling C-FOQA data to be sent after every flight. Others use hard media, such as flash drives, that allow data to be downloaded and transmitted to a secure website.

In the case of GE Aviation, the flight data is received and then fused with weather, airport, navigation and terrain data, as the start of the third step in the process. The holistic approach enables specific anomalies flagged during flights to be put into context during processing. Balogh notes the process enables operators to “drill down to specific hot spots” to put gust conditions, long landings and hard touchdowns into appropriate perspective. The process can identify “latent conditions” that are accident precursors.

GE Aviation sends periodic reports to subscribers as the fourth step of the process. Perusing a sequence of reports helps operators spot both one-time anomalies and trends. Balogh notes that C-FOQA can help operators establish safety performance indicators (SPI) that can alert them to fatigue, chronic weather or maintenance issues. C-FOQA can help prevent inadvertent airframe and engine limit exceedances. It also can spot trends within an organization, such as the degree of compliance with SOPs and checklists.

Balogh points out that C-FOQA also can spot “practical drift” over time. For example, fresh out of sim training, a flight crew might fly stabilized approaches with a 97% success rate, but six months later that might drop to 90%.

Practical drift also can be the result of hiring new crews, going to new destinations, introducing new types of aircraft into a company’s fleet and encountering challenging weather conditions. All these factors can erode error traps built into procedures, regulations and systems, potentially leading to a mishap, incident or accident.

Access to new safety data contained in C-FOQA reports can reduce deviations, particularly if crews’ actions are guided in non-punitive ways. This can help a flight department achieve higher standards of excellence and wider safety margins.

Operators’ Perspectives

Vulcan’s Raymond has 16 years of experience working with ASAP and FOQA programs at a major air carrier and at Vulcan. He’s participated on GE Aviation’s C-FOQA Centerline product steering committee for three years, becoming a strong advocate for data-driven safety insights that don’t depend solely on human inputs.

He discusses the May 2014 fatal crash of a Gulfstream GIV departing Bedford, Massachusetts’ Hanscom Field in which three crewmembers and four passengers perished. During takeoff, the pilots attempted to rotate the aircraft, but engagement of the flight control gust lock prevented the yoke from moving sufficiently to move the elevator to the proper position.





The NTSB noted that the pilots did not discuss checklists, nor did they perform a flight control freedom of movement check prior to takeoff. (See “Gulfstream IV Accident at BED,” Cause & Circumstance, June 2015.) When they could not rotate the aircraft, they attempted to abort the takeoff at 160 KIAS with approximately 2,300 ft. of runway remaining. The aircraft careened off the end of the runway, through the approach lighting system, localizer antenna array and perimeter fence, plunged into a creek bed and burst into flames that immolated all on board.

Based upon data from the crashed Gulfstream’s QAR, investigators determined the crew failed to perform a complete control check on 98% of the previous 175 missions. Raymond notes that procedural noncompliance had led to a normalcy of deviancy, a de facto SOP for the two pilots who had flown together for 12 years. (See “Lessons From the Bedford Gulfstream Accident, Part 2,” May 2016).

Among the NTSB’s several recommendations stemming from the investigation was one suggesting the NBAA work with corporate operators in FOQA groups to analyze existing data and determine how widespread the failure to conduct preflight control checks might be.

With the cooperation of these and other sources, an NBAA-led working group analyzed 143,756 flights between Jan. 1, 2013, and Dec. 31, 2015, conducted by 379 business aircraft. What the team discovered was that the pilots involved in those flights performed only partial flight-control checks before 15.62% of the takeoffs, and performed no checks on 2.03%, which meant 2,923 flights proceeded in the same cursory manner as did the Gulfstream that crashed at Bedford.
Upon releasing its report in September 2016, NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen described the findings of the Bedford accident and subsequent FOQA industry data as “perplexing” and added that “complacency and lack of procedural discipline have no place in our profession.” Further, the NBAA urged other operators to establish a flight data-monitoring program and said it planned to create a council of data collection/sharing experts to identify and disseminate safety issues based upon that body of information.

When the study’s results were published, member companies and their crews took heed. Noncompliance with the required checks dropped to 4% for the group in 12 months.

Using C-FOQA at Vulcan, Raymond counseled his crews and noncompliance dropped to less than 1%. He says almost all issues he’s encountered can be settled during informal chats with crews.

“Initially, there were plenty of challenges to acceptance. Six years ago, we had lots of naysayers due to fear of punishment,” he said. But Vulcan divided follow-up to FOQA analysis three ways: (1) no action; (2) minor correction and review; and (3) elevation to the director of operations. Yet, in six years, only one deviation has had to be escalated to the head of the flight department. Now, pilots volunteer to Raymond saying, “I think I may have tripped an exception” because they trust the process and the feedback programs Vulcan has in place.



Gulfstream 1V accident at BED



GE’s own corporate flight department also uses C-FOQA data for maintenance diagnostics and troubleshooting. Director of Maintenance Joe Spielman uses GE Aviation’s Prognostic Health Management+ system as part of GE’s OnPoint hourly engine maintenance plan. With snapshots of parameters taken during takeoff, climb and cruise, Spielman is able to spot and remedy small problems before they can ground aircraft for major repairs.

He added that maintenance monitoring can spot systems problems because events that are flagged can be discussed with flight crews. In one situation, he recalls, sensors on a specific airplane weren’t indicating full travel of flight control surfaces during routine pre-takeoff flight control freedom of movement checks. After getting inputs from the flight crews, his maintenance team determined that the sensors were flawed. So, they were removed and replaced, thereby remedying the problem.

Cost and Value

Operators report that subscribing to C-FOQA costs, on average, between $425 and $500 per aircraft per month. Actual rates vary as a function of the subscriber’s aircraft types, fleet size, number of parameters monitored and hours flown, among other factors.

While not inexpensive, C-FOQA is a potent safety management tool because it’s precise, comprehensive, consistent and objective. Metrics trump memory. Yet, during a recent webinar moderated by BCA, seven out of 10 respondents said they don’t use it.

That response harkened to a famous misquote by Mark Twain that could be applied to every high-profile aviation accident: “There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to get your attention all day long.” But why wait for a crash before taking action to prevent further loss? The C-FOQA canary can flag risks before they can endanger people or damage equipment.

[thorn bird]

Here's a blurb from todays Australian. Of course our vaunted regulator wouldn't be a prime example of what he is talking about would it?
Na,Of course not, those legends in their own minds are the worlds leading regulators.Just look what they have achieved in the past thirty years...??? err?anything anything at all??

Was the half billion dollars of taxpayer money to reduce a whole industry to ruin value for money? Pollies seem to think thats pretty impressive by anyones standards, which it probably is depending which side of the fence your on.

But they've actually convinced the government they are doing a great job, even though they have not achieved any benchmark set for them, not even their prime directive, to make us safer.
In that they have miserably failed, the yanks leading the way.

Wouldn't it be great if they did something that we could throw our chests out in pride and say jeez they got that right!

OPINION

FAT AND MISMANAGED PUBLIC SECTOR IS EATING US ALIVE

MAURICE NEWMANThe Australian12:00AM November 13, 2017

Milton Friedman once quipped: “You’re lucky you don’t get all the government you pay for.” Well our federal public service costs more than 6 per cent of GDP simply to run, so just how lucky are we? America’s population is more than 13 times Australia’s, yet employs only eight times as many federal public servants. On a relative basis the US has fewer departments and agencies.

In Australia, growth in public service employment and wages outstrips the private sector. ­According to The Australian’s economics editor: “Inflation in the cost of public-sector services is rising at more than five times the pace of the private-sector, and is equivalent to a tax of more than $800 a year on the average ­household.”

But running costs are one thing. In a Crikey article, carried by the Community and Public Services Union, Eric Beecher chronicles appalling mismanagement in service delivery.

There’s Centrelink’s fake debt letter “debacle” where thousands of poor Australians were hit with demands to repay money they didn’t owe.

Centrelink considerately attached a “suicide call-back service number” for the despairing. Beecher describes the handling of the North West Shelf royalty ­revenue by the Department of ­Industry as “extraordinary ineptitude”, “possibly costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in unjustified tax offsets”. The Australian National Audit Office confirms “available evidence indicates that the problems are much greater than has yet been quantified”.

Then there’s the $11 billion spent by the Defence Department managing 119 bases around Australia which the ANAO says is well in excess of the $9.3bn “expected value” of the 10 services contracts, signed in 2014, to do the work.

The department has defended its performance, saying the vast project to renegotiate the contracts has delivered value for money, when considered against increased service demands and changing expectations of the ADF. Yet a new $120 million IT system, meant to manage contracts ­between Defence and the private companies servicing the bases, was $39m over budget and five years late.

There’s also the flawed tendering and contracting processes overseen by the Immigration ­Department, which resulted in the waste of “tens and possibly, hundreds of millions of dollars”. Given these practices were subject to a scathing ANAO report, they could hardly be ignored.

We’re reminded of last year’s Australian Bureau of Statistics census “stuff-up”, the Australian Taxation Office’s massive and damaging IT outage, the Department of Health’s decade-long mismanagement of e-health records, and the embarrassing release of identifiable Medicare information. There’s also the Department of Finance’s lax oversight of ministerial travel arrangements. But not raised is the $576m public service travel bill — a blowout of $75m in just four years.

While this shocking record is acknowledged, Beecher argues the blame lies mainly with outsourcing to powerful private contractors who take advantage of CPSU members, under-investment in IT, IT service providers, and, of course, Tony Abbott.

It appears Abbott “demoralised and demonised” the public service. He imposed an industrial relations “hardliner” to negotiate a new enterprise agreement which the union rejected. His aggressive approach resulted in 27 agencies taking industrial action, with some managers admitting that “staff are simply no longer bothering to make any extra effort to achieve government priorities”.

Is this what the Australian ­Public Service means when it says it “must set the pace for a ­contemporary Australian workforce”? Treasury’s shortcomings are also Abbott’s fault. He ­appointed department head John Fraser, who, it is argued, brought with him a “dearth of quality thinking”. Treasury’s poor forecasting record for most of the decade is conveniently forgotten.

Forgotten too are the 1500 ­Department of Education and Training staff who are supposed to create the conditions and incentives for schools and universities to flourish. They do not operate any schools or employ any teachers, but oversee the spending of more than $34bn a year.

Yet, despite regular funding ­increases, a UN agency ranks Australia 39th out of 41 high and middle-income countries for quality education.

Only 7 per cent of Australian school students perform at ­advanced-level maths, compared with 54 per cent of Singaporean students. But when gender-diversity, climate-change and a negative view of our history fill student’s minds, this is not surprising. Higher education is also lagging. Despite federal university funding per domestic student ­increasing 15 per cent between 2010 and 2015, Australian institutions, according to The Times Higher Education editorial director, are falling behind those in China and Hong Kong.

Regrettably, bad policy decisions and poor administration aren’t restricted to recurrent programs. We remember well the $2.45bn pink batts fiasco which ­resulted in deaths and house fires, and the $16.2bn “Building the Education Revolution” debacle, ­almost $2bn of which was completely wasted.

The latest taxpayer extortion is the National Broadband Network “train wreck”, which was forecast to cost $43bn but which will deliver a system little better than what it replaces for about $60bn.

Then there’s the uncosted French submarines, Snowy Hydro 2, experimental battery storage and the countless other brainwaves probably in our future. The inescapable conclusion is that today’s political leaders, federal and state, treat taxpayers’ money with contempt. They cultivate a culture which fosters conceit and deflects responsibility for failure. These days, announcements pass for policy. Implementation is for others to worry about.

And we complain about capitalism? Such negligence would see corporate executives fired, sued or in jail and their businesses bankrupted. That’s how the private sector is cleansed.

Political ineptitude, on the other hand, is perpetuated, courtesy of taxpayers.

Yes, we do have elections. But as long as the electorate puts its trust in the same discredited snake-oil promises, politicians will keep pushing their “government is the answer” remedies. Only when voters realise that insanity is voting for the same thing over and over and expecting different ­results will change and accountability be possible.

[thorn bird]

Following on from the above opinion piece, it was Beaker and Pumpkin Head that lead the charge on airport privatisation, providing Guvmint with their expertise in doing deals. Great deals they did
Our primary Airports are in the hands of dodgy banks and foreign entities, making squillions, salting it away in offshore accounts, paying no tax and neglecting to expend any cash for airside infrastructure to the extent that Australia's is rapidly approaching third world standards.

Our secondaries ended up in the hands of development sharks, more interested in subverting the law and the terms of their leases and along with CAsA's obscene regulatory suit contributing to the collapse of an Industry that employed an awful lot of people, and contributed to GDP quite significantly.

Its almost unbelievable so much dreadfully inept "advice" provided to the Guvmint by these numpies ends up with the Australian people as the losers.

AAPA: IATA chief warns of infrastructure ‘crisis’
Karen Walker
Oct 25, 2017
The global air transport industry is headed for a major infrastructure crisis, the IATA director general warned Wednesday, as fears grow about how already congested airspace and constrained airports will cope with the predicted growth in air travel.
Addressing the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) annual assembly in Taipei Oct. 25, Alexandre de Juniac noted that IATA’s latest 20-year air passenger forecast expects 7.8 billion passengers to travel in 2036. That is almost twice the 4 billion passengers expected this year. More than half the growth will be in Asia Pacific, with the region accounting for some 2.1 billion new travelers in 2036.
"We are headed for a major infrastructure crisis. In many ways the Asia-Pacific region is ahead of the game with major hubs having robust expansion plans. But there are challenges. Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta are among airports that need major upgrades. Chinese air traffic management struggles to cope with growth. And high costs at India’s privatized airports are burdening the industry. The challenge for governments is to ensure sufficient capacity that is affordable and in line with airlines’ operational requirements," de Juniac said.
De Juniac also cautioned against privatization as a solution to fund infrastructure investments. "We have no issue with injecting private sector mentality into the operation of any airport. But our conclusion from three decades of largely disappointing experiences with airport privatization tells us airports perform better in public hands," he said. “Charges go up as airfares go down. There’s something wrong with this equation.”
Airspace congestion and infrastructure constraints were repeatedly raised as a serious issue at the assembly as Asia Pacific airlines struggle to cope with increasing delays. In a panel discussion, Philippines Airlines president and COO Jaime Bautista said the impact of congestion was “really severe and it affects the reputation of the airline.” He said his airline’s on time performance had fallen to about 70%, but if external factors were taken out, it would be in the mid-90s. “Every minute of delay costs us $60-$65 and so it’s a huge expense and it also affects the productivity of our airplanes,” he said.
Cathay Pacific CEO Rupert Hogg, another panelist, said congestion and delays were eroding all airline brands. “In a very congested environment, the minute you have a delay, the consequential effect becomes very big, very quickly.”
AAPA members included a resolution on infrastructure in their set of calls for action made at the assembly. The resolution calls for Asian governments to commit to further investments in air traffic management and to implement international standards and procedures promptly to avoid unnecessary delays.
“The Association urges governments to think beyond national borders and commit to the development and implementation of enhanced Asia Pacific air traffic flow management systems,” the resolution said.
Karen Walker karen.walker@penton.com