As from Monday you will be able to order a copy of CASA's Flight Safety 2015 compilation book. This is a coffee-table style book that features the best of Flight Safety articles published throughout the year. It's 168 pages in bound book for postage of $15 only. There's a lot of good stuff in there that spreads experience and knowledge stemming from real-life disasters and near-disasters. Log on to the CASA website shop from Monday onward and score your copy whilst they're still in stock.
The Regional Aviation Association of Australia (RAAA) has appointed Mike Higgins as their new CEO, replacing Paul Tyrrell, who resigned some weeks ago. Mike is a LAME, former CPL, MRO manager and has managed an airline. Most curiously, he was a senior manager with CASA, and the man behind the drug and alcohol testing scheme. That means he brings to the RAAA a lot of industry smarts, including how to deal with Canberra and Aviation House in particular. As the RAAA CEO, he'll also be their point man with The Australian Aviation Associations Forum (TAAAF), giving TAAAF some formidable artillery when firing in concert with Greg Russell.
It seems to me the whole kerfuffle about CASA accessing mobile phone data could have been avoided if some people (CASA and me included) had just done some checking. Whilst some sectors of the aviation community were reaching for their pitchforks and flaming torches, CASA had actually been excluded from access to that information back in April. Somewhere along the line, the system worked and no-one noticed. When you're in the process of building good relationships and trust, it's not a good idea to be accessing people's personal data, even if the content isn't disclosed.
The death of Mike Mangold last weekend has saddened the aviation community world-wide. Mike was a former Phantom pilot with the USAAF and a double Red Bull Air Race World Champion. He was still involved with RBAR as the coach/mentor of the Challenger Class. There would have been few better people to hold that job. His skill with aeroplanes was close to unsurpassed, so it stands to show us that the worst can happen to even the best.
Thank you, Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (DIRD) for $11.6 million in grants for remote airports. Most of the money is going to very remote places that most of us will never visit, but could be on the agenda for new CPLs chasing charter jobs up north. However, airports like Carnarvon, Norseman, Barcaldine, Blackall and Flinders Island–GA staples–also stand to benefit from the grants. Once again, not a skerrick for Victoria. Part of the issue is that not a lot of Victoria is classified as "remote" or "very remote". With the Labor government shutting down the Liberal Party's airport grants scheme, many airports whose applications had not been processed were left standing empty-handed. It seems there is a complete impasse. Good, then, that the previous government spent so much money on airports the way they did, but that's cold comfort to those that missed out.
But now, a brickbat for DIRD. They announced during the week that indicative flight paths for Western Sydney Airport were available as part of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). That's good ... for the residents. What we want to see is the proposed airspace structure. There was a slide apparently shown at a briefing in Sydney last month, but although I've asked, DIRD has not given me a copy of the slide yet. Those who saw it could only say that Bankstown pilots were not going to be very happy with it at all! I will continue to push Canberra for the architecture diagrams, but obviously something is holding them back.
Happy are the people at Honda Aircraft Company, after the FAA certified the HA420 HondaJet after a very long, protracted development program. Conceived in the "very light jet" scramble of the mid-2000s, the HondaJet experienced a string of setbacks and delays, which effectively doubled the duration of the time-to-market. It was supposed to be delivered in 2010. However, like most things Honda, I have no doubt this will be a quality jet that has been tested to the absolute limits and should be worth the long wait for those that kept their place on the production line. With the Cirrus SF50 also on the verge of certification, we are set to find out if there is really a vibrant market for personal jets as touted by so many a decade ago.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch