– Steve Hitchen
TAFE colleges offering aviation diplomas have been under withering fire since the Box Hill TAFE/Soar Aviation controversy broke in January 2020, and they will be back the sights again after the Victorian Skills Authority revealed that only 5.4% of enroled students go on to be qualified CPLs. Over the five-year period that the stats look back on, TAFEs turned out 85 CPLs from 1500 enrolments. That is no way to tackle a pilot shortage. Flight training organisations that are accredited as a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) offer the diplomas independent of a TAFE, and in Victoria have a completion rate of 21%. Even so, that means a lot of students are entering the top of the pipeline, but so very few are coming out the other end. Learning to fly is not easy. It's a hard job that requires some application and many start who never finish; the drop-out rates from all flying schools are high. That's disappointing from an RPL/PPL point of view, but it's disastrous from a CPL point of view, and in the case of TAFE colleges, dropping out saddles students with a heavy debt and no qualifications to get a job. It's not good for them, and it's not good for the aviation industry. The data shows that students have more chance getting through by signing-up directly with an RTO and bypassing TAFEs, which may be the primary direction the training industry needs to encourage.
We have reached a now-or-never position on self-declared medicals for PPLs. With RAAus now openly supportive, the TWG thought to be on board and a real appetite for reform dominating at Aviation House, it would appear that all obstacles have now fallen. However, CASA works in mysterious ways, and on some occasions in the past the bleeding logical has escaped them anyway. Medical reform was all but guaranteed in the GA workplan released in May this year, but still the issue has to go under the microscopes of the Part 67 TWG, ASAP and the Principal Medical Officer before it gets back to the place it started: the office of the Director of Aviation Safety. If CASA's past history still has echoes in Aviation House, the final advice to Pip Spence will have been filtered through bureaucracy to the extent that it may not fit the original intent. This effect was most obvious when medical reform produced the Class 2 Basic standard. Something, sort of, but not everything. The difference this time is that both Spence and CASA Chair Mark Binksin are openly embracing reform, which is an advantage the GA community hasn't enjoyed for many years.
This time next week AusFly will be in full swing. The SAAA is more than ready to go, super-charged by a two-year COVID-induced hiatus that deprived the GA community of a great party. The pre-registrations are better than this time in 2019, and are expected to be topped up by aircraft and aviators that just roll up on the day. Flipping through the seminar program and the flying display schedule, this AusFly could easily be one of the best, and that's saying a lot given that there have been some first-class events in the past. Remember if you're flying in that there are procedures to get in and out with minimal stress. You can download them from the AusFly website, and make sure you carry them somewhere in the cockpit within arm's reach. It probably doesn't need to be said that everything will be weather-permitting; that is the elephant in the hangar at all fly-in events across the country. Let's go, GA. Narromine beckons.
Ausfly will have another impact: I won't be putting out an LMH or an e-Newsletter next Friday. I've decided to delay both until Monday 19th so I can include news and events from Narromine rather than leave it for another week.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch