There has been no disturbance in The Force, nor a rip in the space-time continuum; LMH has indeed arrived on a Thursday. That's because the Yaffa Media clan has gathered in Sydney to celebrate the company centenary, marked with a soiree tonight and a day off work tomorrow. We'll probably need it.
With the FAA certifying GE Aerospace's Catalyst turbine, the way is now open for Textron Aviation to get the Beechcraft Denali SETP to market. When Textron announced the Denali (originally to be branded Cessna), it surprised the GA community world-wide that the manufacturer pushed aside the faithful PT6 engines that were proving match winners in the Caravan and King Air ranges, opting for an engine that not only was untried, but at the time didn't even exist. The quality of that decision isn't clear at the moment; the pairing of Catalyst and Denali needs some miles under its belt before we know that. However, Textron needed a strong point of differentiation between the Denali and the Pilatus PC-12, which, to the market, looked like the same airframe. It wasn't going to be enough to use a different engine; that engine needed to leap the P&W offering by a significant margin. If they are right, will subsequent models of the Caravan and King Air come out with Catalyst options? The Denali is scheduled for certification this year, after that we'll start to get our first clues whether or not Textron has made a quantum leap into a new generation of SETP.
The post-implementation review (PIR) of the Class 5 medical standard is underway, and CASA has said it will include a survey to round-up feedback from the general aviation community. This is all part of what is nowadays a robust consultation process. But consultation is often only as good as the information supplied. If you look through the published feedback on any number of consultations, you will find feedback that can be triaged into one of three categories: good, bad or ugly. Good feedback is fact-based and well argued, bad feedback generally contains errors of fact or is badly stated, ugly feedback is bad feedback laced with vitriol. The Class 5 PIR will rely heavily on good feedback and anything other than that will be set aside. That's because self-assessed medicals are an area in which CASA has feared to tread for years, and AVMED is a bit nervous about it. What they don't need right now, and will be on the alert for, is people gaming the system and being dishonest. CASA loves risk mitigators, and if they think that pilots are taking them for a ride, they are unlikely to surrender the risk mitigators they have applied: the operational restrictions. So when you send in your feedback, make sure CASA can place it in the "good" file rather than any of the other two. Keep in mind also that a lot of what they collect will be used to inform the Class 4 medical as well.
Election years are always a fun time in aviation because politicians on both sides of parliament hate it when the word "aviation" starts to appear in headlines. It scares them. The result of that fear is increased leverage for aviation advocates. This year, there is something in the wind about the leased metro airports. In past years, master plans have breezed through the approval process in Canberra, but that's been a tough path to walk for the airport operators recently. In November, the minister wrote to the operators outlining what they intend to do to protect aviation. It sounded great and was soothing to the GA community. Words. Whilst words are the weapons of the political species, they often aren't enough. In the past few weeks there have been rumblings from organisations on the leased airports that they are being threatened with bulldozers. Those threats are coming in the form of short leases being offered. History shows that when short leases are offered, it's because the airport operator has other plans for the ground they stand on. What other plans could they have than using it for aviation? To not do so is surely a breach of the head leases, and represents a raspberry blown in the direction of the minister. I am hoping to run this down more next week before heading to Avalon.
Speaking of elections, about this time every election year, I hit-up the incumbent government for its aviation policy. I won't be bothering with the ALP this year; they will only point to the White Paper and tell me to read that. I will, however, be putting the acid on the Coalition to see what they've got for us. At the time of writing, we don't know the exact election date, but calendar-crunchers around the country are zeroing in on 17 May. That is actually the last day that an election can be held, and possibly the Saturday of choice because it gives the ALP more time to recover their popularity from the stalled condition it's in. Once Albo fires the starter's gun, I'll be writing to the Coalition to try to extract their thoughts about aviation, and encouraging the GA associations to let us know their thoughts in the form of policy papers.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch