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The Last Minute Hitch: 12 December 2025

12 December 2025

– Steve Hitchen

You are reading the 495th and final installment of The Last Minute Hitch. But that can wait for a moment.

AOPA Australia recently took part in a flag-swapping ceremony with AOPA China at Aero Asia 2025. This isn't really much of a surprise given that Shanghai-born Li Zhuang, founder and CEO of the Chinese-accredited Pegasus Aviation School at Bankstown, is now a director of AOPA Australia. Forging international links is a good idea for AOPA Australia, and despite this move the organisation says it is committed firstly to advocacy for the GA community in this country. Personally, I would have thought the most logical international move would have been to re-affiliate with the International Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (IAOPA) first in order to get a broader briefing on the international situation as it relates to the Asia-Pacific region. But in aero club bars around Australia, is this likely to be greeted with the same enthusiasm with which AOPA is spruiking it? An unusually low number of likes on the Facebook post promoting the ceremony seems to indicate a reticence for the GA community to embrace it. However, AOPA has never been an organisation to shy away from controversy, so keep your eyes on where this takes them.

"..the consultation process is a pipeline for change.."

CASA records show that there are currently 2200-odd holders of a Class 5 self-declared medical. During the consultation as part of the post-implementation review, only 164 people responded, of which 86 had a Class 5. That means only 4% of Class 5 holders responded to the consultation. In my mind, that's not enough. In the absence of co-ordinated, effective advocacy for private GA, consultation such as this is what substitutes, and is our opportunity to be heard and recorded in a formal manner. That doesn't mean if we speak up we automatically get what we want, but it does guarantee us a level of influence that is otherwise forfeited. In all consultations, CASA has more reason for change if there is a weight of consensus behind good ideas, and less reason for change if there isn't. In past years, consultation with CASA has been cursory at best; lip service to a requirement. Now, with the Aviation Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) in place, the consultation process is a pipeline for change demands to reach CASA backed by a weight of GA community support. If it's there. If people don't get behind consultation in numbers, CASA has little option but to believe that only a fraction want change. That's why responding to consultation of any type by any aviation organisation is critical. It has become our advocacy, and we need to own it.

Today, the Australian Flying eNewsletter goes into its annual hibernation, to return in late January. However, The Last Minute Hitch won't be coming back this time; LMH is going into permanent retirement. Next year, the eNews and all content becomes the domain of editor Kreisha Ballantyne. Just as once I ran the whole show, now she will do the same. Nearly 14 years ago, then publisher Doug Nancarrow asked me to start writing an opinion piece to go with the weekly Australian Flying eNewsletter. In a world increasingly adopting defamation litigation as a means of striking back, the idea of putting my opinion out there generated a not inconsiderable amount of trepidation. Many writers will confess their shock when they first understand people actually read their stuff, and it has been no different for me. Sending LMH out each week was often like consigning it to a great silence, then I'd get an angry e-mail or phone call as evidence that people were reading it. Across 495 columns, I learnt that opinion can be a powerful tool provided it has two characteristics: it's fair and it's backed by facts. A simple formula that I stuck to every time, bolstered by an army of experts willing always to check my thinking and provide the background needed to shape thoughts into words. To those people (a rough count revealed no less than 120 of them), I say thank you for being a part of LMH. I owe any street cred to your guidance and support. I am not naming people because often the support has been confidential, but you will know who you are by the number of times my name has come up on your phone. You made LMH as much as I did. 
Thanks is also due to the team at Yaffa Media–James, John, Priscilla, Anthony, Cameron, Stephanie and everyone else in the Surry Hills office–who played their part in getting LMH out like clockwork on a Friday. Nobody does it better. But I want to reserve special mention to the tireless, affable Andrew Murphy, the many aviation companies that believed enough to advertise with us and, naturally, my partner Sonya the Magnificent, who for 14 years had to counsel away all that trepidation.

May your gauges always be in the green,

Hitch

Sandy in reply to Hitch

Via AP emails:

Steve,

About your latest LMH, sorry to see that your last epistle hasn’t included one powerful reason people don’t engage with the CASASTROPHE’s consultations.

That is very obvious, CASA have only given lip service to consultation and the General Aviation (GA) community have been cowed into compliance and having spent great effort, unpaid, making submissions in years gone by into various government inquiries into aviation for zero real reforms.

The 2014 Aviation Safety Regulation Review, is a good example. Some hundreds of submissions, then 35 out of 37 recommendations accepted specifically or in principle. But what actually happened?
Need I elaborate? Next inquiry received far fewer submissions. Why would people waste their time?

You might revisit my Change.org petition of some 3000 signatures and hundreds of written submissions to get a good feel for how our GA people view the regulatory regime of the independent corporate CASA that has 2/3rds destroyed GA.

I make the “2/3rds” claim advisedly, having created my GA business (from 1968) on my own airport as Chief Flying Instructor, plus Chief Pilot and Maintenance Controller for charter and RPT services. Over the intervening decades I’ve watched how hundreds of flying schools have closed, and so we lost hundreds of experienced instructors and LAMEs (maintenance engineers). From 1968 until now our population has doubled and we are much wealthier, but GA has either shrunk, especially training, or not grown, therefore 2/3rds destruction is a fair conclusion.

The “little option” that you postulate for CASA to act overlooks what it’s supposed to do, which includes creating or improving the regulations to benefit aviation.

With respect, your reason, quoted below, for CASA to stand still on its extremely complex and ill reasoned suite of unique Australian rules, inappropriately migrated into the criminal code, and created in conjunction with hundreds of ICAO exemptions, I find difficult to grasp.

“If people don't get behind consultation in numbers, CASA has little option but to believe that only a fraction want change.”

I’d put to you a question, if you asked 100 GA people “do they think CASA does a good job with sensible regulations?”

I think we both know you’d be lucky to find one or two GA people of that 100 that would agree, or who viewed CASA positively.

You would certainly receive a large number whose description of CASA wouldn’t bear printing. But this is what will continue until aviation is administered via a Department with a responsible Minister, as the Westminster model of democracy demands by principle.

Regards,

Sandy

Illustration, pamphlet and photo of my scheduled service to Tasmania operating in the 1980s and 1990s.

MTF...P2