Alphabet issues - Via the Oz.
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Quote:Call to lift regional airport funds
12:00amANNABEL HEPWORTH
The nation’s peak body for airports has ramped up its push for next month’s budget to increase funding for regional airports.
Australian Airports Association calls for more regional funding
The nation’s peak body for airports has ramped up its push to convince the Turnbull government to use next month’s budget to increase funding for regional airports.
The Australian Airports Association wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack this month in a bid to emphasise the issue of regional airport funding.
Ahead of the May 8 budget, the association’s chief executive, Caroline Wilkie, said the funding was needed “to break the back of the infrastructure backlog plaguing our regional airport network”.
“With the government also considering potential changes to aviation security requirements in our regions, we must first have safe and sustainable aeronautical infrastructure to maintain the services we are trying to protect,” Ms Wilkie told The Australian.
Last month, Mr McCormack outlined 31 projects that would receive a further $7 million in funding under the Remote Airstrip Upgrade Program, with projects including the upgrading of Camooweal airstrip in Queensland that is used by Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft.
But Ms Wilkie said the program, which was allocated $33.7m over four years in the 2015-16 budget, “has now run out”.
“This program is always oversubscribed and must be reinstated in this coming budget,” Ms Wilkie said.
She said there was an “equally important need” for a new regional airport infrastructure development fund for airports that were not able to tap the remote funding and that processed fewer than 250,000 passengers a year.
“This sector of this industry has no dedicated federal funding assistance and is struggling to maintain its infrastructure, yet it is the backbone of our regional aviation network,” Ms Wilkie said.
A spokesman for Mr McCormack said the government “understands and recognises the important role regional aviation plays in servicing the needs of regional and remote communities across Australia, particularly in delivering vital services such as emergency medical care”.
“While funding for regional airports is generally the responsibility of the local governments which manage them, the Australian government has provided funding for specific projects,” he said. As well, $84m in funding was recently announced for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
The call comes as regional aviation becomes an increasingly sensitive political issue, with frustration expressed to a Senate rural and regional affairs and transport committee inquiry about the cost of airfares to the bush.
Qantas has recently run ads in Mount Isa and Cloncurry and Longreach telling residents “we are listening”. In the ads, QantasLink chief executive John Gissing says the global shortage of pilots “is impacting how many regional flights we can operate, and that has impacted prices”.
While the competition tsar this week released a report on the profits of the major privatised airports at Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, Ms Wilkie said regional airports were “fundamentally different businesses”, due “primarily to costs from different economies of scale”.
“Regional airports are owned and operated by local councils and more than 60 per cent lose money every year simply trying to maintain largely WWII-era infrastructure,” she said.
“Without safe and sustainable regional airports our regions risk losing access to essential transport links — and for those more remote communities, access to life-saving emergency services.”
Pilot push to be consulted
12:00amANNABEL HEPWORTH
Australia’s largest pilot union is pushing for pilots to be represented on a key consultation body to CASA.
Pilot push to be consulted
Australia’s largest pilot union is pushing for pilots to be represented on a key consultation body to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. The Australian Federation of Air Pilots, which represents more than 4500 pilots, wants professional pilots included on the Aviation Safety Advisory Panel. In a submission on an independent review prepared for CASA on fatigue rules, AFAP says such a move “will assist in a balanced consultation and review process and help develop the general pilot communities trust in CASA’s consultation process”.
The growth in jet-setters is to coincide with e-commerce-driven air freight, a report suggests. The Infrastructure Partnerships Australia report on “fixing freight” says the shift by consumers to online purchasing is pushing up air freight as it so often involves “next day” deliveries. “However, this growth will coincide with the growth in the passenger aviation task at many capital city airports,” the report says. “This will place increased pressure on capacity — and require a review of operating curfew rules, future capacity or other restrictive regulations.”
Qantas is taking the “Queen of the Skies” Boeing 747 off its Los Angeles services later this year. Instead, the 747 services into Los Angeles will be replaced by the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. In other changes to the international network, Qantas has announced that it will offer extra services to the Japanese city of Osaka and the Philippines capital, Manila.
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