– Steve Hitchen
Moorabbin business owners marked for eviction in the last master plan have been given a reprieve. MAC has said the new plan to be sent to Minister Catherine King in March will show the western boundary remaining where it is now. MAC has already destroyed a lot of movement area on the northern apron and was going to bulldoze more, but an outcry from stakeholders prompted then minister Barnaby Joyce to throw the master plan back at MAC. This was new territory. Most master plans for the federally-leased airports have gone through with a cursory read and a rubber stamp, but this time fierce resistance from stakeholders made someone in Canberra take notice of what non-aviation development means for Australia's vital capital city airports. Is this the beginning of greater scrutiny and airport corporations being held to account? The GA community would like to think so. Although this is not the first time stakeholders have screamed blue murder over destruction of aviation infrastructure (think runway 18/36 at Bankstown), it may be the first time that the department has really taken notice of the consequences of wielding their rubber stamps irresponsibly. The department is the guardian of the infrastructure, and it is hoped they now understand they actually do have the power to protect it.
Urban air mobility (UAM) and eVTOLs are certain to dominate the lower flight levels in Australia by the end of the decade. Despite some resistance from within the GA community, the revolution is coming and we're better off being prepared for it than sticking buckets on our heads and hoping it all magically goes away. There is a whole new industry coming: new rules, new infrastructure companies, new investment, new pilot qualifications and a lot of stuff we can't accurately predict yet. This week Eve Air Mobility tackled some questions I sent them about how they see eVTOL operations and the design of vertiports. At the same time, CASA released its first draft Advisory Circular (AC) on vertiport design guidelines. The AC is open for four months, a period of time usually not extended to CASA consultations, which shows the aviation community they're determined to get this right and aren't pretending to have all the answers. But there is something I can't get over: the general public needs to embrace this as well or the commercial aspect will fail. The general public is always very slow to trust big leaps in technology and look askant at stuff that doesn't look right no matter how good the engineering (Beech Starship). Are they going to flock to these new machines that represent large drones moreso that any existing successful aircraft? It is also likely the necessary network of vertiports to support UAM will give rise to a whole new breed of NIMBY. The whole concept is so advanced and so different that we don't even know what all the teething problems are going to be yet. None of that will stop UAM; the birth may be difficult, but the baby is coming.
It's hard to blame RAAus for bailing out on fatal accident investigations. At first read this looks like an ASAO shirking their responsibilities, but if you go deeper into it, you'll find a lot more. Like many others, I frowned when RAAus declared that accident investigations weren't a "core activity", but then realised that an ASAO is an administrative organisation not unlike CASA, and CASA isn't the lead organisation in accident investigation either. Accident investigation is solely the domain of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is the way it should be. The sort of accidents that plague recreational aviation are the same ones that plague VH-registered aeroplanes, and so the causes and contributing factors are very similar if not exactly the same.The problem is not so much one of the registration on the side, but the fact that there are so many accidents and incidents in aviation that the ATSB doesn't have the budget to look at them all. They were relying on RAAus to do their own under their own budget. This ramped-up the risk for RAAus given that they have no protection under the Transport Safety Investigation Act they way the ATSB does. With RAAus demurring on leading fatal accident investigations, it falls to the state police and coroners to decide what happened, which is unlikely to lead to a safety outcome as much assigning blame. The only answer is for the Federal Government to properly fund the ATSB so we can learn more from every accident that happens, not just the VH-registered ones.
A subscription to Australian Flying will certainly brighten up your first day of Christmas! This year we're offering 40% off the price of a print plus digital subscription; a gift that will last a whole 12 months. What that means is six issues of Australia's best general aviation magazine in your letterbox and on your device for just $34.00. That's at least one Christmas present sorted! Get onto the Great Magazines website and nab yourself a great bargain.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch