Goodbye navaids, and thanks for all the guidance. With the beginning of the navaid shutdown yesterday, private pilots in Australia are left with a bit of a quandry about redundancy. A back-up network of VORs and NDBs will stay in place as a contingency against the very remote possibility that the satellite constellation that services our GNSS (GPS) units crashes (or is deliberately turned off by President Trump). So, if you're the owner of a private IFR aircraft, you will be on GPS by now, and if you have a TSO 145 or 146 unit in your aeroplane, you're not required to have the instruments in the plane to use the back-up navaid network. And with ADF units in particular becoming harder to get and expensive to service, it makes sense that owners will let IFR navigation redundancy slip. OK, so the GPS network is unlikely to go on the fritz will no notice, but what about your GPS unit? When the magic smoke inside stops working mid-flight, if you don't have a foolproof Plan B you'll have to go straight to Plan C: call up Centre and scream for help. So many decisions for aircraft owners to make.
In the great wide world of commerce, the Board of Directors of any company are like the Gods of Olympus: they sit upon high handing down edicts for the CEO/COO/MD to comply with. Remarkably, this is not the case at CASA! Even though there is a Board of Directors headed by Chairman Jeff Boyd, the ultimate authority for aviation safety is the Director of Aviation Safety, who reports straight to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. That creates a situation whereby the board is really an advisory council, and cannot even direct the DAS to tie his shoes properly! I am told this is actually a legislative thing that gives complete power to the DAS. Getting it changed would literally require an act of parliament, but aviation lobby groups, most specifically The Australian Aviation Associations Forum are pushing hard for change so that the ultimate authority lies with the board.
And it's good to see the much-touted meetings between the Department and the authors of the TAAAF policy and Project Eureka went ahead on Wednesday. This level of engagement is very important for general aviation if we are to ever have a decent future. Also good to see that Deputy Secretary Shane Carmody got involved. Carmody is an ex-CASA person, and one of the few people in aviation circles that we all seem to agree is a White Knight: someone who understands and has the abiltiy to make things happen. We need more White Knights in positions of power, and Carmody's involvement might be telling us that GA is being taken seriously in Canberra.
Textron Aviation revealed details of their brave new turbo-prop this week. It's been on the drawing board for so long now it would be just about impossible to rub out the chalk marks. Knowing this company and their reputation for creating out-right winners (think C172, Bonanza, King Air, Caravan, Citation ...), it's not much a Hail Mary to predict they will grab a chunk of the market. One of the great hurdles may be that the market sees the as-yet-unbranded aeroplane as being a bit of a "me too" product in a class ruled by Pilatus and Socata. Oddly enough, another factor could be the actual brand it is given: it could be a Cessna or a Beechcraft. Whatever they decide to call it might tell us which brand Textron thinks is the stronger.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch