[Peetwo]

A shout out to the GAAAI -  

Via the General Aviation & Airports Association Facebook page in recent days:

On YMEN airport:

GAAAI - General Aviation & Airports Association

What would happen to infrastructure and to the businesses that rely on roads infrastructure, and to trucking companies like Linfox - if roads were privatised and they could no longer use them?

The road usesrs probably have the ear of government.

Not General Aviation (GA). Successive governments have ignored the many issues failing our industry.

The irony is one of the owners of Essendon Airport is Lindsay Fox and he is doing exactly that together together with Max Beck and the respective families that run the airport, and it is causing and has caused, immense harm to the true blue aviation companies that form the General Aviation sector in accordance with the ICAO definition. The members provide a concerning tapestry of reports.

The Essendon Airport CEO, Brendan Phian told Member airport companies they could go to Baccus Marsh, and the future of Essendon airport is big jets. Four of our Members witnessed this at a user group meeting.

Essendon Airport did illegal deals with recievers on leases rents, and so so so much more in the property chess game that sees members livelihoods adversely effected.

The CEO said they are about ‘property economics’. And they are a law unto themselves.
Members state they have maintained that position by threatening the livelihoods of those who disagree or seek government assistance it was one of the only airports in the country that didn’t have a chamber of commerce, members had formed a view they would be selected for targeting if they sought to negotiate, if they complained, as they had seen happen to mates they had been working shoulder to shoulder with. Livelihoods have ended along the way, community work, eye surgery for kids, mapping, fire spotting, innovation, engineering, smaller charter operations.

Many of those who have protested the corruption over the years have been marched out.

Fox came to the Labor party because he disagreed with what happened to Ansett. Altruism? No.

The legacy is one of total corruption if we consider the conduct at Essendon Airport. And it is no different to what our melbera report at Moorabbin, Archerfield, Jandakot and many regional airports.
 
Marching out Property Managers when they point out the other legal instruments
And compliance issues (Essendon was devoid of a property manager for 6 months when she was marched out by the CEO), no aviation department, no property manager for 6 months (and silencing them by forcing them into agreements against entitlements).

Tenants have said how they were celebrating with families  and children on Christmas Eve (tanants more than one), were served eviction notices and others invoices with deals made with recievers on false leases never been shown to the tenant, the reason to ruin this special time with family?

Because the tenants would not have access to lawyers over the shut downs period. And the out of offices are immediately switched on after sending. Members have described the most horrific adverse actions. Blowing up power boards then conducting an electricity compliance and failing them, forcing the tenants to use generators (more than 4 Members) that were four times the price of other companies - because why-The electricity company is owned by family - Active electricity. There are also instances of tenants saying they felt they had no other option than to use this company.

The board know this and the CEO is still there, the corruption runs deep, this isn’t just a rogue CEO.

Site leases being charged at building rent (and emails going back to 2006 saying they would not renew the lease unless it was so). And keeping the FAC policy a secret, from those whose leases it applied to.

Stating in writing the reason rent reviews are more than two years late is because of high staff turnover. More than three years late because they hoped another company would fall over.

What a mess. And it’s a story our 400 plus members are repeating around the country.

Where are the roads for GA? Hangars and airports are the equivalent. The government privatised airports and trusted corporations with minimal oversight. It failed. It failed infrastructure. It failed aviation. It failed the men and women of industry. It failed Australia. 

Plus:

GAAAI - General Aviation & Airports Association

For 22 million Max Beck and Lindsay Fox felt they were entitled to revert the site leases, while the tenants had been guaranteed renewals for 25 years with the Associated Airport Sale Documentation - and previous policy clarifications by the FAC - 3x25 year renewalst [75 Years] before reversion. This slipped through proper governance via inadequate management of operators, requirements for auditing and compliance management.

The FAC and sale documents governing the sale were disappeared from tenant access. In recent times they were shared with GAAAI and proved what the smaller operators were saying was correct. The airports were gaslighting the sites lease tenants, lacking transparency, actively conspiring against some of the hardest, most specialised businesses and workers in Australia. The airport operators misrepresented the reduction in landings to the government to support Master Plans (which went into decline while profits went up) saying it was lack of need. The airport were misrepresenting the industry requirements and reducing access to infrastructure in a variety of ways, including maxing landing fees, absolute abuse of Market Power against hangar tenants.

One by one General Aviation businesses shut down and airports became confident in the lack of oversight, they engaged in blatant trickery to fix the rents, take the hangars and redetermine the definition of General Aviation. They misrepresented the facts on the reduction of small aircraft landings, saying it was a reduced requirement which so happened to coincide with the privatisation, lacking transparency in withholding the commercial facts and underhand tactics, how they had made it near impossible for that sector of the industry with increased outgoings, taking over hangars, and astronomical landing fees.

Operators redefined airports, they breached regulations, airports were reclassified, they increased non aviation development. The privatised model vision didn’t involve the smaller operators performing critical infrastructure tasks. The government lacked any matrix by which to effectively audit the industry. The hard working men and women suffered immeasurably. The private airport operators went to great lengths to do this plotting strategy against tenants, behaving recklessly to industry sectors and without focus towards the harm this would create. Strong arming, threatening, abusing, exerting an imbalance of power.

Refusing to recognise legal rights, legal bodies, legal site rent Hangars. Pushing tenants into legal corners with unconscionable conduct then laughing in their offices, and marching out staff who didn’t agree with the approach and who had history in Airport management. Some who speak out about what they have seen and the level of scheming that goes on in these under-regulated offices of airports.

How good they are at the decisive chess game management of airport property economics. Airport Management smirking to employees about how they ‘had it in the bag’ when referring to another hangar tenant they were posturing for eviction to replace with non aviation development or to convert a site lease, or to even leave empty to teach a lesson to those impassioned enough to speak out.

Unconscionable conduct, and more than that, lack of care, honour, responsibility and regard to airport sale conditions.

It is a story repeated by our Members from airports around the country in similar tales.

United we Stand.

MTF? - Definitely! P2