[Kharon]

Another AP worthy post from gcafinal, posting on Pprune.  Can't agree with all of it, but some of the points made are solid and reflect the tea room views of many industry professionals. Food for thought:-

I personally do not want anyone talking to me on the radio with unqualified opinion backed up by lack of standardisation and no formal training or proper understanding of flying procedures, particularly in an instrument environment.

If I am flying to a destination where there are no weather reports, then I adopt the AIP procedures for the management of my fuel and decision making for diversion requirements. If I am visual then I have my own traffic awareness. If I am in a busy environment then I will have ATC. (Depends on your definition of "busy.") I do not want my judgement marred by some unqualified person.

Up until 1989 we had a DCA service called "Flight Service." This was made redundant on the basis of cost. However, the costs were not that high, given the incredibly good world class standardised traffic/weather information and SAR alerting service we used to get. Recognition of its loss and the need for weather and traffic information came too late and instead of re-instating it, we saw the advent of Unicoms and CAGROs on the basis that this is what they do overseas (and we had better have something, whatever it is). Very poor substitutes from an air safety perspective.

Frankly, I don't care what they do in the USA. They have the population base to financially support their technology. For the Australian airport operators, this is still a cost add-on. No one will do for free. Do you want a free service. What sort of service would that realistically be? I do not want airport fire officers doing pseudo ATC/FS duties unless as I said above, they have been formally trained and a new duty statement has been accepted and they are certified/licenced without further cost imposts. ARO's, Fire Officers, Groundsmen, Airport Cleaners? You must be joking!

This whole matter was made worse in the late 1980s, when the Aerodrome Local Ownership Plan (ALOP) was very poorly introduced by the then Department of Transport. Agencies like Local Councils suddenly discovered that they did not have the revenue to cope with running their newly acquired airports and overnight Australian Airports began cancelling their (then) airport licences to avoid compliance. Places like Port Hedland and Karratha tried to retain their ATC AND ARFFS but could not do so.

We either have a dedicated service or we do not. We would not accept a Fire Officer as a 1st Officer on the flight deck because it is cheaper! The opportunity for increased threats caused by imposing these latent failures into an already threatened aviation environment is highly questionable. I certainly do not support untrained people distracting me on the radio while I am in flight, especially if I am in IMC.

Tim Tam qualifier in Blue.........