– Steve Hitchen
Slowly, slowly doesn't always catch the monkey; sometimes the monkey gets away unless we move fast enough. In GA's case the monkey represents the opportunity to arrest the decline in qualified engineers and it is CASA that is moving too slowly. The industry has expressed a sizeable volume of disappointment in the CASA DP on pathways for engineering training, exemplified by the Regional Aviation Association of Australia RAAA response. Their paper implores CASA to forego the idea of modular training for the time being and concentrate on a LAME ticket that can have a much wider scale of exclusions than the regulator is proposing. What that gets us is engineers trained to work on the vast majority of the GA fleet sooner than CASA's proposed path. Although authorisations like pressurisation and oxygen systems are crucial to keeping the top end of the fleet in the air, what we need right now are more engineers that can do a periodic inspection on a C172 or replace a cactus fuel pump in a Warrior. Just ask any aircraft owner who can't get their plane back from the MRO in a reasonable time at the moment. The crux of the RAAA paper is that speed is needed to unclog the pipeline and the CASA proposals don't lend themselves to that. The monkey is on the move, and if we don't catch it soon it will be on our backs for a long time to come.
Anthony Albanese first flagged another white paper when he was still opposition Shadow Minister for Transport. To be precise, it was at Wagga Wagga in 2018 in answer to a question posed by this masthead. From that point on the momentum from the ALP for yet another inquiry/consultation/study/paper has been inexorable. The extent of their enthusiasm for a new aviation white paper is matched perhaps only by the extent of the GA community's apathy. Now that the terms of reference have been announced and the process is open for submissions, the industry has reacted with waves of indifference. It has not helped that the department has allowed only one month and three days for gathering industry feedback. I supposed that is mitigated by the ability for people to change the dates on submissions made to so many previous inquiries and send them in again. How long do you need to copy-and-paste? Even so, the ALP needs to brace themselves for a distinct lack of co-operation; it was flagged by the dearth of submissions to the dead-end senate inquiry and already people are seeing this white paper as yet another dead end. But here's the issue: the industry needs to stiffen its upper lip and play the game once again. It's all about politics. Although the Coalition presented us with an almost complete wish-list of things with the Aviation Recovery Framework late in 2021, that concept suffers from having been conceived in the womb of the mob who are now on the wrong side of the house. Politics demands that it is therefore defective, and the ALP must form policy of their own. So, once more we have to reach for our pens so the government can rightly say they developed effective policy and didn't give credence to the other side, even if the outcomes are oddly similar because the feedback never changes.
Weather cameras have become a staple part of aviation flight planning and decision making. Although care needs to be take with the age of the images, they are perhaps better than weather forecasts. When it comes to aviation safety, these pictures are worth a lot more than a thousand words. Dick Smith understands that, which is why this week he committed more personal capital into expanding Australia's network. The company that has benefited Aus Web Cams, is small company run by an aviator who know the value of weather cameras. The company is calling for the aviation community to identify holes in the weather cam coverage that need plugging; critical points on well-flown routes where visual warning of the conditions would impact the decision to fly. It may be an airport, mountain peak, silo or other fixture. As aviators, we know the weather cruces around Australia better than anyone, so are best placed to help site the new cameras. Don't shy away from putting forward your ideas.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch