Unintended consequences.
Mr McMillan : We categorise it not as a pilot shortage but as a pilot training blockage. That might sound like a euphemism, but, at the end of the day, we've got to roll back five years. We've had aviation regulatory reform that's been going on for 23 years and it's not finished. Some of its been okay; some of it's been appalling. In the pilot training area, it's been an absolute disaster. There's a whole heap fewer pilot training centres in Australia than there used to be. Many of them are foreign owned and they're only training pilots for their own operations elsewhere and the number of training establishments has shrunk considerably. Australia's population is growing. You could only think that the same percentage of people want to be pilots. I think what's happening is that the sausage machine has shrunk so small that it's very hard to get a training place.
We would say that, from Alliance's perspective, as many people are out there wanting to be pilots. As a company, we are always training ahead. We train eight pilots at a time. We bring them in. We seem to be a good place to work. There are all the different places around Australia to go and live. There is a whole range of different training techniques and things have come in that are far smarter than they were 10 years ago.
Some of the regulatory requirements that we have to meet in this country are absurd. That's a separate argument for a separate place. There were no safety issues; there wasn't a number of accidents or anything. But the unintended consequence of what CASA have done with some of their regulations has caused this issue, particularly in Australia.
The tree of CASA lunacy finally bears fruit. Bitter, inedible and another mess left behind for industry to clean up. Stellar, absolutely, mind bending, stomach aching ducking stellar..
Mr McMillan : We categorise it not as a pilot shortage but as a pilot training blockage. That might sound like a euphemism, but, at the end of the day, we've got to roll back five years. We've had aviation regulatory reform that's been going on for 23 years and it's not finished. Some of its been okay; some of it's been appalling. In the pilot training area, it's been an absolute disaster. There's a whole heap fewer pilot training centres in Australia than there used to be. Many of them are foreign owned and they're only training pilots for their own operations elsewhere and the number of training establishments has shrunk considerably. Australia's population is growing. You could only think that the same percentage of people want to be pilots. I think what's happening is that the sausage machine has shrunk so small that it's very hard to get a training place.
We would say that, from Alliance's perspective, as many people are out there wanting to be pilots. As a company, we are always training ahead. We train eight pilots at a time. We bring them in. We seem to be a good place to work. There are all the different places around Australia to go and live. There is a whole range of different training techniques and things have come in that are far smarter than they were 10 years ago.
Some of the regulatory requirements that we have to meet in this country are absurd. That's a separate argument for a separate place. There were no safety issues; there wasn't a number of accidents or anything. But the unintended consequence of what CASA have done with some of their regulations has caused this issue, particularly in Australia.
The tree of CASA lunacy finally bears fruit. Bitter, inedible and another mess left behind for industry to clean up. Stellar, absolutely, mind bending, stomach aching ducking stellar..