Welcome to the first Last Minute Hitch for 2016. Since our last newsletter came out on 11 December, it appears most of the general aviation industry has been on the traditional sabbatical ... except for the firebombers of course. It seems every week there were more images of single-engine attack tankers (SEATs) in action on the news, or Ericsson Air Cranes. In my case a glance upward from the beach at Airey's Inlet spied Coulson's RJ heading to a fire south of Ballarat. Then there has been the two big ones: Wye River and Yaloop. The Wye River fire descended on the town on Christmas Day, forcing some very skilled pilots to forfeit their Christmas ham and scramble their water bombers. This incident, and the tragic Yaloop fire, have had the firebombers on their toes over the past two weeks. We cannot thank these pilots, nor the firefighters on the ground, enough for what they have done. And it's not even February yet!
Embraer released some interesting delivery figures today. They show that the Phenom 300 is out-selling the smaller Phenom 100 by 10 to 1. Furthermore, Cessna has reported similar results, with the larger Citation M2 shipments three times that of the Mustang. Have the private jet manufacturers misread the standard mission that operators want private jets for? It could be that potential owners for small jets are waiting for the SF50 Vision. We won't really get a good read on the market until the Cirrus jet is certified and established.
They did it! Mooney International got the proof-of-concept M10T trainer in the air just before Christmas. If you're not familiar with this aeroplane, it's an all-new composite three-seater with a diesel engine. Yes, it has three seats: two in the front and one in the back. It's not a common configuration, and Mooney says the whole idea is that another student can sit in the back and observe the instruction going on in the front row. That's not a bad idea, provided CASA's somewhat cloudy regulations actually allow this. The M10T has a projected speed of 140 KTAS, so that makes it a very viable commercial trainer.
CASA has extended the deadline for Cessna SIDs for another three months. That gives some breathing space for LAMEs to clear the backlog of work, but if owners have been a bit lax in getting on with it, then there is still some chance that aircraft will have to be grounded. If you haven't got your aeroplane sorted yet, now is really your last chance.
Camden Airport's Master Plan got approval in late December. I would have been very surprised had it not: it really doesn't say much except for some taxiway naming and minor improvements around the place. Other than the probable move of the air museum from Bankstown to Camden there is not a lot of development planned. So what was there to not approve? I find this disappointing; I class Camden as one of the airports with the greatest development potential in Australia, and this steady-as-she-goes approach really doesn't utilise this asset to anywhere near its capacity.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch