Today is the deadline for nominations in the 2016 Wings Awards. Similar to last year, many people appear to have left it too late to get submissions in. Consequently, we will extend the deadline by one week to allow for late entries. We recognise that there is a lot of work to go into a submission, and the last thing we want is for deserving people to miss out on a nomination because of time. On the other side of the coin, we can't keep the entries open for ever. The new deadline is now 8 July.
Last week we started a survey asking readers how they are adopting new technology in their cockpits. So far the results are saying that electronic flight books are now the major source of charts and the most common flight planning tool, and that there is a trend towards noise-canceling headsets regardless of the price. We'd like some more data on this, so we'll leave it open for another week. If you haven't done this quick survey yet, please contribute ASAP.
At last there is medication to heal the festering sore. CASA has amended the legislation that severely limited the use of aeroplanes fitted with Jabiru engines, so that engines that don't contain the components they perceived to be the source of failures are no longer limited. It's a commonsense solution, but the debate on whether the restrictions were ever justified will echo around the aviation industry for some time to come. I can't help but feel that CASA is going forward uneasily with this. The "great unspoken" is what will happen if one of the engines on the unlimited operations list fails by the same mechanism that caused this issue in the first place. Will CASA immediately modify the instrument to again apply the limitations to all engines? I suspect there are a lot of eyes watching Jabiru aircraft at the moment.
AOPA CEO Aaron Stephenson has delivered the mother of all backhanders to CASA Director of Aviation Safety Mark Skidmore over Skidmore's comments that not all sectors of general aviation are suffering at the moment. Stephenson described Skidmore's attitude as "our biggest single problem". Here's what GA's biggest single problem really is: both sides are right. AOPA is correct in saying that GA is not in good shape; the number of struggling aero clubs and disappearing flying schools is plenty of evidence for that. Conversely, Skidmore based his comments on statistics, which show that general aviation flying hours actually grew 12.4% in the last nine years recorded. How can both be true? The answer lies in how the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (let's just call them BITRE) presents the data. For example, it shows that flying training is up 5.0%, but that includes the overseas students training at the specialist academies that eschew local students or teach 150-hour CPL only. Whilst they grow, the private schools are turning off the lights, which in turn gives potential PPLs nowhere to train. Charter is down, ag flying is down. The areas that are increasing are the ones we are least worried about: test and ferry and aerial work; those areas do not add as much to the mass that GA needs to survive on as the areas that are down do. BITRE is expected to release the 2014 figures within a month. It will be very interesting to see how the issue shapes up then.
Election 2016 is on tomorrow! There is some good news in all this: no more ads on TV telling us how bad the other mob is. Our issue this year is not so much what they are telling us, but rather what they are not telling us. The Coalition has refrained from released any form of aviation policy despite all the work done by AOPA and TAAAF in the countdown to polling day. It leaves the general aviation community no option but to question why. Speculation will reveal two reasons: firstly, they don't want the policy to be known before the election because it's just too damaging; and secondly, they don't want to tell us we are just mosquitoes in the scale of election policy and will we please just go away.The ALP has released a policy, but they've made the fatal mistake of telling the world it's based on the very-much discredited Aviation White Paper. Neither party has left us with much to go on, and the truth is, if every licensed pilot in Australia (about 30,000) voted against the incumbent, it would mean a loss of 200 votes per House of Reps electorate. That's a swing of 0.2% based on 100,000 voters per electorate. The most marginal seats in Australia are held by around 0.3%. In other words, if we vote with our feet they may not notice we've gone, and even then we march off to the opposing party ... which also has little workable aviation policy.
Someone who will be gone after this weekend is QLD teenager Lachie Smart, who sets out on his solo circumnavigation at 0400 or thereabouts on Monday morning. The lad is reportedly "nervous, excited but moreover focused". May the aviation Gods smile on you the whole way around, Lachie, and may this journey show you and others that achievement always starts with a decision to achieve. Supporters and followers of Lachie can track his journey on the Wings Around the World website.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch
Note: a correction was made to the first version of this article, which stated that the ALP had no published policy.