If you have any doubts about why you fly aeroplanes, or are perhaps thinking it's time to exit that part of your life, one look at this week's Friday Flying Video will change your mind. This is a beautifully produced highlight reel from the 2015 Outback Air Race, encasing all of the good things about private flying. It has amazing landscape, warm, friendly people and more laughs than Flying High. Somewhere in amongst all of that there are a couple of shots of aeroplanes. To me it emphasises what I have long thought: aeroplanes are really just the medium that brings together a very special band of people, we call them aviators. When the day comes for me to walk off the flight line for the last time, it won't be the aeroplanes that I will miss the most. Kudos to the OAR participants for finding a way to turn great times into gold for the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
As Warren Truss said in his speech to parliament, it has been a year since he delivered the government's response to the Aviation Safety Regulation Review. One year since we all stood up and applauded the response that accepted 32 out of 37 recommendations. It was a seminal day in the history of aviation in Australia; the day someone with some power not only listened, but also understood. In the year since passed, that optimism has taken a bit of a beating as not a lot on the ground floor has changed. There have been improvements at Aviation House, but the benefits have yet to cascade down, meaning pessimism is starting to count the numbers for a leadership challenge to oust optimism. From my point of view, I see this as a year of preparation for the changes to come. There is a lot to be done, but we need CASA to do their homework first lest they embark ad-hoc on another caper that results in more millstone regulations. But, a year should be enough. I am expecting great change in 2016, and will likely join the howling minority if, in December next year, we aren't all a happier bunch of aviators.
Both Bankstown and Camden have been operating like ants under a magnifying glass: trying to go about their business whilst simultaneously waiting for sudden oblivion. When the company holding the leases, BAC Holdco, was put on the market, there was a slimmer of hope that a new owner would reverse what has been a downward trend in the aviation operations, particularly at Bankstown. But now it has finally been sold to new owners, it looks like nothing is set to change at all. When I opened the press release, I was harbouring foolish notions that maybe a company sympathetic to aviation had taken over, which would take an aggressive approach to making tenancy, particularly at Bankstown, sustainable. Alas, the release stated that a property developer and two superannuation companies had sold the leases to ... a property developer and a superannuation company. Insanity, said Einstein, was doing the same thing and expecting the results to be different.
Stand by for Round Two of SIDs, this time starring the Beechcraft range. The Cessna Supplemental Inspection Documents was a comprehensive invasion of old airframes for the purpose of checking for corrosion and fatigue cracks. The impact on the industry was substantial because the inspection and repair costs could easily out-weigh the value of the aeroplane. Owners had some tough decisions to make. Now it's the turn of Beechcraft, but this time the inspection schedules shouldn't be as onerous. Cessna, I am told, had virtually no data on the state of their ageing fleet, but through the various Bonanza societies around the world, there is a stockpile of research and information about the effects of ageing. That should enable the manufacturers to create a more targeted SIDs program, which should be more workable than the approach taken for the Cessna program. However, we'll have to wait on our hands until the documents are ready for industry consumption.
You just have to love Burt Rutan. His aeroplanes are the most out-there designs in history. His latest piece of creativity, the SkiGull is a two-seater sea/land/snow plane that can loiter for up to 35 hours. Presumably someone somewhere would want to do that, but I suspect not your average GA pilot. Having said that, it's also a seaplane that will do 170 KTAS with a Rotax 912iS! I can imagine there are plenty of people out there that want to do that! Even if it never makes it to market, the SkiGull is still a remarkable aeroplane, and one that could only have come from the mind of Burt Rutan.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch