– Steve Hitchen
As far as aviation years go, 2024 holds a lot of promise, provided those promises weren't made with fingers crossed behind the backs of those that made them. The big two for 2024 will be the Federal Government's Aviation White Paper and CASA completing the GA Workplan. If the green paper is a reliable indicator of the future, the white paper will be a champion of sustainability, with many other initiatives likely to miss the cut. In many cases, support for sustainable initiatives will prepare aviation for an inevitable future, but the cost of change is way beyond the finances of most GA companies. The white paper needs to recognise that GA companies will likely need government grants to survive in the brave new sustainable world. I also expect CASA to finish the GA Workplan sometime this year, which will be something of a watershed moment for the industry. Although there is still a lot of dodgy regulation that needs to be excised, the GA Workplan should start to generate benefits almost straight away; benefits that the GA community itself has said will lead to a better future.
I have said before in this column that it is possible to apply immaculate logic and flawless reasoning to come up with the wrong answer. We're unlikely to get a better example anytime soon than the Class 5 proposal. Yes, a self-declared medical will save us angst and money, but if it's applied as written, Class 5 will be so restrictive that pilots will be discouraged from taking it up in great numbers, defeating the point of the regulation. No more than one pax, below 10,000 feet, no aerobatics, no formation flying, no IFR, below 2000 kg MTOW. No other jurisdiction in the world that has a self-declared medical has such a prohibitive exclusion regime attached to it. I acknowledge that CASA says there needs to be ongoing assessment of the restrictions, but how is that going to change anything? If you can't fly aerobatics or formations on a Class 5, then you'll never get data that it's safe to do so. Unless, of course, you adopt the experiences over other national aviation authorities and RAAus, but CASA has clearly rejected those experiences in favour of their own logic and reasoning. Theory is good, but experience is better, and experience shows that a pilot can perform a number of flight activities without a medical and do it safely. RAAus pilots have been flying formations for years without a medical; the FAA recently released a report saying that their BasicMed system has resulted in no loss of safety. This is all experience that should trump theory, but in CASA's world, for some reason, it doesn't.
Last August, stakeholders were enticed to attend a "secret" airspace design meeting at Bankstown. The confidential briefing on the proposed changes catalysed by Western Sydney (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport (WSA) entering service left stakeholders bereft of any confidence in the future of GA in the Sydney basin. In December, Airservices Australia released the design proposal that had drained the colour from the face of Bankstown stakeholders earlier in the year. Seeing now what they saw then, my face has turned a whiter shade of pale also. The plan converts the lion's share of Class G in the Sydney basin to Class D, or what is being termed Class D+. There are new IFR procedures and new VFR routes, including two that intersect. Cursory attention has been paid to training areas for Bankstown and Camden, with proposals for two areas: one geographically remote from Bankstown and the other over inappropriate terrain. Effectively, the health of GA in Sydney has been made subordinate to the requirements of WSA. There is too much money and political imperative for anything else to realistically have happened. The airspace design seems to be characterised by complex design and gaffer-tape solutions. The ashen faces of the stakeholders in Sydney indicate that this is a discouraging turn of events, one that may result in an exodus of GA from the metro airports in the area.
GA will lose two skillful and passionate CEOs to CASA in February. Regional Aviation Association of Australia CEO Steve Campbell and RAAus CEO Matt Bouttell will both take up positions as Executive Managers: Campbell in National Operations and Standards and Bouttell in Regulatory Oversight. Both men have been at CASA before, so they aren't going in with eyes wide shut. The big negative is that both of them are lost to GA advocacy; the major positive is that they take their passion for GA to the regulator in senior positions. It stands to be seen if they can plough through the bureaucratic inertia to champion change; many have tried and many have failed before. The difference here is that there couldn't be two more qualified people to fill those roles, and unless I have been misled, they are both in lock-step with the ambitions of CASA Director of Aviation Safety and CEO Pip Spence. As proven by the GA Workplan, Spence has given GA some much-needed focus since assuming the mantle of DAS/CEO in April 2021, and bringing Campbell and Bouttell on board sharpens that focus. With the earth-shaking MOSAIC regulations to deal with the in the near future, forward-looking managers are going to be needed to help the regulator cope with such massive change. Sorry for the pressure, guys.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch