– Steve Hitchen
From today onward, private and recreational pilots can fly without a valid medical certificate. The long-awaited self-declared medical system is now active and ready for people to apply. It sounds easy, but it is clear that CASA still recognises some risk, particularly when it comes to whether or not a pilot is able to accurately self-assess. Part of the risk management is an educational module that must be completed and passed as part of the application process. The module itself is nothing that most licensed pilots haven't encountered before, and being open-book you can refer to the medical assessment guidelines. But the eligibility to self-assess is more than just answering 80% of 15 questions; there are other requirements also. CASA has listed a lot of conditions and medications that they believe impairs a person's ability to self-assess. This stands to eliminate a lot of people who previously were celebrating not having to see a DAME again. So the Class 5 medical is not a free-for-all, but many pilots will qualify, and for them this is a huge step forward.
The Australian Airports Association (AAA) submission to the federal budget has raised some thorny questions. In the submission, AAA calls for infrastructure support for mid-sized regional and metro airports. Whereas the Coalition government created funding programs for both remote and regional airports, nothing was forthcoming for the metro GA airports like Archerfield and Bankstown. Thorny question #1: as the six metro GA airports have been privatised and the operators have developed substantial tracts of land for commercial non-aviation use, should they be entitled to government funding? The general answer from the GA community would probably be a resounding "no". Destroying aviation infrastructure (RWY 18/36 at Bankstown and the west end of the northern apron at Moorabbin) usually earns you no friends in the aviation community. That being said, private enterprise is usually not excluded from government grant programs, so why should airport operators not be the beneficiaries of government hand-outs? Thorny question #2: what type of projects need to be supported? The ALP government is on a crusade to convert aviation to alternative energy sources, as exemplified by the green paper released earlier this year. That's going to be an expensive exercise, which may monopolise the aviation budget leaving no cash for non-sustainable projects like widening runways and putting in lighting systems. Admittedly, the AAA refers to infrastructure for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and electric charging stations, but for general aviation, demand to justify this is still many years away. In the meantime, runways still need to be strengthened and lighting systems installed. Whether the ALP can stomach spending on non-sustainable projects may be the largest hurdle the AAA needs to clear.
If there was any indicator that eVTOLs are now part of the future of aviation and not just a space-aged fantasy, it is Aviation Logistics placing a huge order with AMSL Aero. With the Vertiia still in development, Aviation Logistics has shown confidence in Australian manufacturing and the future of the eVTOL industry; an industry that is still embryonic. eVTOLs are not just an evolution, they are a revolution in general aviation that Australia is still trying to accept. Airservices and CASA have done a lot of ground work in these areas, and some visionary companies bought into the eVTOL industry at the conception stage, but many traditionalists in GA are taking an I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it stance. Even though no eVTOL in Australia has reached the commercial stage, indicators such as Aviation Logistics' investment should convince the sceptics that it's time to open their eyes and see. Perhaps many of them have memories of the Very Light Jet (VLJ) craze of the mid 2000s that dissolved into nothing, expecting that eVTOLs will suffer a similar fate. However, whereas VLJs were being forced to fit into an impossible specification, eVTOLs like Vertiia have no such constraints, leaving designers free to build the best machines for the future of aviation.
Congratulations are due to four Victorian women who placed second in the International Dawn-to-Dusk competition last year. Jess Phillips, Theresa MacDonald and Amanda Deed, who–along with observer Gail Collins–used a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza to touch every state and mainland territory in Australia between dawn and dusk on 13 December 2022. They began on Flinders Island (TAS) and finished in Forrest (WA), having landed in Victoria, the ACT, NSW, QLD, SA and the NT along the way. The crew traveled to the Royal Air Force club in the UK to collect their prize. A great effort all around that took a lot of planning to pull off.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch