[Peetwo]

A red letter week -

Project Eureka by Mitch in today's Oz -

Project Eureka: red tape ‘crushing general aviation’

• Mitchell Bingemann
  
  
• The Australian
  
  
• April 8, 2016 12:00AM
  

Marc De Stoop, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

A wide-ranging review of Australia’s aviation industry has called on the government to sell off its billion-dollar-a-year Airservices air traffic controller organisation to help fund a revival of the struggling general aviation sector.

The 130-page report — dubbed Project Eureka — has been put together by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and is scathing of aviation ­bureaucracies, blaming creeping over-regulation for a dramatic decline in aircraft movements at secondary airports, a drastic reduction in aviation mechanical engineering apprenticeships and the destruction of small aviation businesses.

The AOPA — which represents 2600 general aviation aircraft owners and pilots in private, commercial charter and airline operations across Australia — claims the general aviation sector is collapsing under the weight of onerous regulation.

In a radical proposal, the review has urged the government to privatise Airservices, the government-owned organisation that employs more than 4000 staff and manages air traffic around the nation’s busiest and largest airports as well as co-ordinating rescue and firefighting services for on-site accidents.

The organisation brings in ­annual revenue of about $1 billion, pulled largely from airports, light aircraft operators and ­airlines including Qantas and ­Virgin, which pay for the organisation’s ser­vices.

According to the author of Project Eureka, AOPA president Marc De Stoop, Airservices should be privatised and the proceeds funnelled into the general aviation industry.

“We want to create an industry trust fund with an independent board like the Future Fund that will support local jobs in general aviation and maintenance, and generate new sources of revenue through the creation of innovative aviation companies,” Mr De Stoop told The Australian.

The Eureka report claims a full privatisation of Airservices could bring in as much as $4bn. It proposes that the proceeds of the sale be split, with half going to the commonwealth to help claw back its budget deficit and the other half used to establish an industry trust fund to be chaired by aviator and businessman Dick Smith.

Privatising national air traffic controllers is not unprecedented territory. Canada privatised its national air traffic controller in 1996 for $1.5bn while the British government has partly privatised and owns 49 per cent of its air navigation system.

The AOPA proposes that this fund could be used to reinvest capital in the general aviation industry to buy back secondary airports, spur on job creation and increase the sector’s involvement in new research and development activities. It also recommends that portions of this fund could be used to provide venture capital for innovative start-ups.

This would allow the fund to take equity stakes in potential innovative businesses, which in turn could provide ongoing returns.

“Funds could be allocated to both industry and universities in partnerships to provide the high tech innovation the industry constantly needs to survive, grow and prosper,” the report said.

The Eureka report also bemoans the slow death of secondary airports around Australia, saying exorbitant leasing fees and the encroachment of commercial property developments is resulting in a decline in aircraft movements from these airports.

“The statistics prove this undeniably. Bankstown Airport, the centre of the Australian GA industry in the 1980s, was the busiest airport in the southern hemisphere with over 550,000 aircraft movements per annum. It is now below 180,000,” the report said.

“Commercial business parks can be established anywhere where appropriate land zoning exists. Aviation businesses need a runway to survive. Runways just can’t be built or located anywhere. They are essential pieces of infrastructure.

“Funds from the trust should be used to finance the buyback of the secondary GA airports. The current owners are not acting in the spirit of the Airport Sales Act which was supposed to foster aviation activities. Instead they are simply being run as a business park with rents benchmarked or based upon similar business parks in the surrounding areas.

“This was not the intent of the Coalition’s Airport Privatisation Policy.”

A spokesman the Department of Infrastructure did not say if the government was considering selling Airservices but said it would examine the issues raised in the Project Eureka report once it was provided by AOPA.

“General aviation issues are already being considered by the General Aviation Action Group that has been established by the government-formed Aviation Industry Consultative Council. The group includes members across a range of general aviation sectors,” a department spokesman said.

A re-hash of the week that has been so far -

And Oliver apparently Dick will see you in court if you don't provide the following..

Much to the horror of George Glass, who can't seem to see the wood for the trees & continues to hold onto some 20 yr grudge for Dick Smith, the President of the 'Tendentious Bloggers Association' Ben Sandilands astutely explains to his audience, that mostly couldn't give a fig about GA, what Dick Smith is trying to achieve in his lawyer's correspondence to DAS Skidmore:

Mixing cattle choppers and big jets on the same radio frequency headed to court

Ben Sandilands | Apr 02, 2016 12:06PM |

It is highly likely that few Australians, or for that matter, readers of The Australian are paying much attention to Dick Smith’s episodic attacks on the competency of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

But they should, because what is at stake goes beyond even air safety, to the willingness of elected governments to be heard and obeyed by public servants who arguably are impervious to considerations of public interest.

For those who have made it to this, the third paragraph, the supremacy of the executive branch over the administrative branch of government isn’t just about Dick Smith’s well argued concerns about several hundred people being slaughtered in a scheduled airliner because CASA apparently doesn’t give a damn about what Ministers say, but about Australia being an effective parliamentary democracy.

The technicalities of Dick Smith’s objections to CASA edicts as to how airspace should be managed in this country—in a remarkably asinine way in the opinion of this observer—ensure that few members of the public, or their elected reps, ever get their heads around them.


Dick Smith flying his Longranger over the east coast of Tasmania

However last week Smith, aviator, adventurer, businessman and philanthropist, had law firm Mark O’Brien, serve notice on Mark Skidmore, director of safety, CASA, of his intention to put Mr Skidmore in the witness box in the Federal Court to explain or defend Mr Smith’s claims that he has ignored government direction in framing changes to airspace management in Australia’s skies.

This is something which ought to interest not just Australian carriers, but foreign users of our airspace, such as Emirates, Etihad and Cathay Pacific, who have like Qantas and Virgin Australia, been on the receiving end of some shoddy lapses in performance by AirServices Australia that have been detailed in various legally privileged incident investigations by the ATSB.

For those who have made it thus far, the core issue is a direction by CASA that pilots using mostly light aircraft at low altitudes in a range of remote locations use the same radio frequencies as civil airlines operating at high altitudes to keep themselves aware of each other’s movements.

That direction is not only idiotic in terms of the distractions and confusion that they can cause, but inherently harmful in its potential to block vital communications between large high jets and ATC controllers in a range of situations.

There is no radar coverage over much of the interior of Australia, and separation standards between the jets that overfly these areas not only require strict position reporting, but prompt actions when for example a jet has to make a medical diversion, or descend lower because of a cabin pressure problem or an engine failure in a twin engine airliner.

There are large ranges of normal, as well as abnormal requirements in air traffic control that in a sensible, competently run air traffic control operation would never have to accommodate the communications of aircraft managing cattle, or organizing their own separation when using rough or often unchartered landing strips which exist in their hundreds under the paths flown by A380s, 777s, 787s and A330s.

This sort of infantile pandemonium endorsed by CASA in contradiction of specific government policy settings is something that the newly responsible Minister, Darren Chester, ought to deal with inbetween the other numerous distractions of his infrastructure portfolio.

But infrastructure is a department impervious under both sides of politics to informed direction by its responsible ministers. The disgusting conduct of CASA and the ATSB in relation to the Pel-Air accident is but one example of that.

The comic opera decision to force cattle mustering aircraft onto the airwaves of giant jets flying across Australia contrary to the clearest of instructions has its deadly upside.

That risk is a reason to hope that CASA is too set in its ways to blink, and that these matters do come to court, because such fundamental conflicts between the executive and administrative branches do really need to be dealt with in public.

"..That risk is a reason to hope that CASA is too set in its ways to blink, and that these matters do come to court, because such fundamental conflicts between the executive and administrative branches do really need to be dealt with in public.."

Spot on Ben, bring it on I say

Dear Ben perhaps to help reinforce the greater message in your short but excellent piece, that seems to have been totally missed by George Glass , you could draw your readership to the following off the Alphabets thread:

Willy-leaks:-

If the wing beat of a butterfly can start a tornado; we need to consider if a worm fart in Cantberra could trigger a shit-storm. Seriously.

Can a small, almost insignificant event, such as the CASA director no longer wishing to be ‘associated’ with aircraft owners and pilots trigger such a thing. He has cancelled, with immediate effect, his AOPA  membership.  The single line, peevish, spiteful sentence, speaks volumes.  

It speaks to the character of the man; the “I no longer want to be” etc. part being particularly telling.  It’s not my ‘email’ to distribute so I’ll leave it at that, but the notion of a dummy spitting event, followed by a curling up of toes to prevent socks being put on springs to mind.  Clearly facts, common sense and expertise are an anathema to the DAS; truth and light shining into the dark places where the real evil lives is unwelcome.  A decent man would write a letter, to the boss AOPA explaining that, with respect, there was a potential conflict of interest; or, a philosophic difference which could not be resolved, that would be acceptable.  Nothing too fluffy, a salutation, a soupçon of regret and a Regards at the end would have been a completely understandable response to the AOPA campaign.  None of that for OST; just the immortal words “I no longer want”.  Ever watched a two year old rebel against spinach.   

One of the very, very good things is the event demonstrates to the general population that AOPA is freeing it’s self from the toils of Casamiteism; and becoming, once again an independent voice with some lobbying power.  This, standing alone, should increase the membership and assist regaining lost reputation.  An active, respected AOPA free of ‘Yes men’ and ‘external’, political interest could be a shot in the arm.

As the AOPA president rolls out Eureka and continues the campaign to restore sanity and balance to the embuggerance system, we should all be there supporting his efforts.  Industry needs every bit of help it can get; time to bury old hatchets, heal the rifts and for the dwindling pool of aircraft owners and pilots to get involved.

Well done Willy-leaks; bravo.  I’d love to see the thing that rattled Oliver’s cage; patience children; this is one time where I will seek permission rather than forgiveness.

Toot toot.....

After thought; one of the problems with hiring in ‘military’ help is that they are so very unused to being openly challenged it creates all manner of mental aberrations. How dare a lowly other rank tell me I’m a duck wit, waste of time, space and money.   The unnatural event of being told to go and ‘boil your bottom’ must do dreadful things to the psych.   Who in the forces would dare tell an AVM, to his face, he was wrong; or of his past value, present worth and future prospects?

How pathetic - OST are you a man or a mouse? Off with you then you parasite don your Hawaiian shirt, grab your box of Cubans and go & sulk with all your sparkling Chardonnay sipping mates down at the RAeS, ducking WOFTAM!

Meanwhile in the struggling IOS world of Oz GA the fight back is on

A Letter to the Minister


As AOPA members will be aware the board of AOPA commissioned a comprehensive briefing paper, Project Eureka, written by leading aviation industry figures detailing problems with the General Aviation industry and providing real solutions to these problems.

The paper is now complete, and will be available on the AOPA website next week.

AOPA President Marc De Stoop has prepared the following covering letter to the Minister for Major Projects, Territories and Local Government which summarises the recommendations made in Project Eureka.

AOPA will be meeting with the Minister and key advisors in the coming weeks, as well as circulating the executive summary to media outlets.

Please take the time to read this letter and familiarise yourself with the main changes we will be calling for in order to revitalise one of Australia’s most important industries.
It is vital that AOPA members support the board in getting Project Eureka as much traction as possible with politicians across the country.

Please view the PDF of the letter here: Letter to Minister re Project Eureka Apr-16

Extracts from the letter:

My comment off PT:

11
PAIN_P2

Posted April 4, 2016 at 8:20 am | Permalink

“..I am not here to defend Dick or his actions, he is quite capable of doing that for himself..” – Well said stuaero, I am of the same mind and have witnessed many years of Dick Smith doing that on the Pprune Forum.

There are many Dick Smith detractors that feel the same as George, Fred & co; that DS in Australian aviation circles is the root of all evil. However I disagree with George’s statement ending with..

“..is a mystery to those of us at the pointy end..”

..that may be from your perspective from the lofty altitudes of a Sky God but it is definitely not the view of those struggling to make ends meet at the small end of town.

As for Dick’s ‘latest tantrum’ that is also blatantly untrue and you only need to read the lawyer’s letter (see here: http://auntypru.com/forum/-Skimore-Corner?pid=3949#pid3949 ) or see the past Oz articles dating back more than two years.

However like stuaero I am not here to defend Dick and what is really sad about some of the posts above is that for pilots who have supposedly reached the pinnacle of their careers that they have completely missed the point of Ben’s article.

Anyway I am not sure if it helps but the following is a link for the current AOPA Australia President’s letter announcing the upcoming release of their Project Eureka http://www.aopa.com.au/assets/583/Letter_to_Minister_re_Project_Eureka_S28C-116033110110.pdf

Here is the preamble to that letter:

“..A Letter to the Minister

As AOPA members will be aware the board of AOPA commissioned a comprehensive briefing paper, Project Eureka, written by leading aviation industry figures detailing problems with the General Aviation industry and providing real solutions to these problems.

The paper is now complete, and will be available on the AOPA website next week.

AOPA President Marc De Stoop has prepared the following covering letter to the Minister for Major Projects, Territories and Local Government which summarises the recommendations made in Project Eureka.

AOPA will be meeting with the Minister and key advisors in the coming weeks, as well as circulating the executive summary to media outlets.

Please take the time to read this letter and familiarise yourself with the main changes we will be calling for in order to revitalise one of Australia’s most important industries.

It is vital that AOPA members support the board in getting Project Eureka as much traction as possible with politicians across the country..”

MTF..P2