Airservices Australia has said it will remove 2000 ALAs and HLSs from the Aeronautical Information Publications and WAC charts if details of the owners or operators can't be verified.
Under CASR Part 175, Airservices is required to hold details of an Aeronautical Data Originator (ADO) for any aerodrome, Aircraft Landing Area or Helicopter Landing Site.
According to Aeronautical Information Circular (AIC) A17-H29, Airservices can't verify the ADO details for 2000 entries in their database, and has made a call to the aviation community to provide the missing data or the airstrips and helipads will be removed and their ICAO designator deleted.
"If Airservices has not received notification from owner/operators by 4 January 2018, it will remove any reference to the ICAO identifier (YXXX) of the AD/ALA/HLS and any associated aeronautical information from Airservices aeronautical database and the Integrated Aeronautical Information Publications (IAIP) i.e. Enroute Supplement Australia (ERSA), charts and other documents and products," Airservices has stated.
Some of the entries that face removal are very popular amongst the aviation community, or are high profile, such as:
- Rawnsley Park, SA
- Dirk Hartog Island in WA
- Eucla, WA
- Margaret River, WA
- Kings Canyon, NT
- Killiecrankie, Tas
- Lady Barron, Tas
- Sandfly, Tas
- Gabo Island, Vic
- Kyabram. Vic
- Orbost, Vic
- Tidal River, Vic
- Agnes Waters, QLD
- Childers, QLD
- Noccundra, QLD
- Sweers Island, QLD
- Blayney, NSW
- Frogs Hollow, NSW
- Nambucca, NSW
- The Oaks, NSW
Whereas several of these ALAs/HLSs may since have closed, many of them are still in operation. Many on the hit list are hospitals or medical centres, and other are high-profile helicopter sites such as the MCG and TCN Channel Nine.
Owners and operators who want their site to remain in the database will need to complete a Data Product Specification (DPS) form and lodge it with Airservices Australia before 4 January next year.
More information and the AIC containing the full list are on the Airservices website.
*Note: this article originally nominated Clare in SA as one of the airfields named. This was in error. The AIC refers to the helipad YCLA in Clare.