Recce

Australia of course is looking forward to a major technology transfer via the F-18A programme and has picked up much useful work in recent years through the offsets trade. We are designing our own basic trainer, though even the marketing people are willing to admit that it Is going into the marketplace swamped with similar types. Hopefully, it won’t have the commercial rug pulled from under it by a Government that is only now realising that there is potential for Australia to be involved in the international aerospace scene.

Certainly, though, Indonesia’s Nurtanio and their far-sighted President (and Indonesian Government Minister for Science and Technology), Dr B. J. Habibie are well and truly showing us the way Ten years ago, Australians were ignorant of the Brazilian aerospace industry, today we are buying their excellent products wholesale; ten years from now your commuter airliner could well be Indonesian as could many of our helicopters. Indonesia Posts an enviable track record that we could do well to examine more closely.

Is the Dofa to General Aviation What Nero Was to Christians?

The Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association (AOPA) under the direction of its new President, Peter Patroni. has well and truly taken a stand for General Aviation in Australia Indeed, AOPA claim with some authority that the very future of GA in this great country is threatened by the Department of Aviation’s excessive cost recovery programmes

AOPA point out that with a budget of $339 million for 1981/82 the Department is consuming more than $200 per hour flown by civil aircraft in Australia as against only $118 per flying hour two years ago. Furthermore, in the past two years GA has endured increases in air navigation charges of 34% yet quoting the 1980 General Aviation Study which claimed that GA was only contributing 17. 3% of allocated costs, we find that today the Department claims GA is still only contributing 16. 3%.

In the past three years, GA has been hit by drought, recession, high interest rates, a credit squeeze, diminishing charter, air training and agricultural work and accelerating air navigation charges in addition to fuel costs double what they were in the late seventies. A measure of the present state of the private market is reflected In single-engine registrations which dropped from 425 in 1980 to 223 in 1981, a fall of more than 50% and one that continues unabated to this day.

The private flyer does not need the expensive navaids, the extended runways and the flash terminals and handling facilities that are presently under construction, but he certainly has to pay for them.

In a nation that owes so much of its development success to the aeroplane, it is time that a fairer deal was initiated for the private pilots of Australia.

Is the Super 80 the Emerging 150-Seater?

Certainly the hottest thing in the airliner market today is the DC-9 Super 80. This aircraft and the massive 44 (for a total of 60) aircraft ordered by USAF for KC-10 Extenders, have saved the Long Beach division of McDonnell Douglas from virtual closure.

The Super 80 is fast becoming an entrenched 727 replacement. Though current production versions do not possess the maximum range of the Boeing trijet, the Super 80 does consume around 25 to 30 per cent less fuel per sector than the 727 which has led many US operators to turn unprofitable flights into revenue earners. California’s PSA has replaced its 727 with Super 80s and reports that the introduction of the new twinjet to the fleet has reduced seat-mile costs across the board by up to five per cent. Senior Vice-President for Operations, James Sheehan, in a recent enter via interview, called the Super 80 ‘our biggest asset’

TAA have long evinced a strong interest in the Super 80 and with the A320 launch slipping by the month they are, like most 1ntermed1ate onerators worldwide looking closely at the Super 80 as an economical alternative. Certainly, if TAA were to back-trade its 12 aircraft 727-200 fleet on an equivalent number of Super 80s (or the longer-ranging 82 or 83 variants) it would be able to reduce its per sector break-even factor by up to ten percentage points.

In the meantime though, it is unlikely that TAA would be making a re-equipment decision till the future of the airline is well and truly resolved, and this, until the outcome of the Federal election is known, could be many months away.

Are Pistons Making a Comeback in General Aviation?

The release of the new Piper models in late 1982 (reported in detail in this issue) has certainly begged the question – is the piston-engined GA aircraft making a comeback?

Sensitive to the relatively high acquisition cost of light turboprops, Piper has launched their high-flying Aerostar 700P and Mojave with good old-fashioned piston engines. The Mojave is basically a pressurised Navajo cabin mated to the proven 350 bhp engines of the Chieftain. The result is an aircraft that tits between the competition’s Chancellor and Golden Eagle with an economical cruising speed of 220 kts for a range of more than 1200 nm. While this performance isn’t in the Conquest I or Cheyenne I range it isn’t far short of the small turboprops and is available at around half the cost. Similarly, the hot new Aerostar 700P can cruise at up to 261 kts with a range out to nearly a thousand nautical miles. Excellent performance indeed and at a price that many companies can get interested in. ln Australia, where avgas supplies are plentiful, there is a big potential market for this type of corporate aircraft. No doubt, with the introduction of the DofA two-pilot rule for aircraft certified for ten or more passengers sales of Cessna’s 404 and Piper’s Chieftain will receive a healthy nudge.

Another challenger to the turboprop is the American Thunder engine which is based on a Chevrolet V8 racing car engine. This powerplant is producing greater power at altitude than the original turboprop units fitted to its test bed Rockwell 680, in addition to anticipated lower hourly operating costs and a higher level of reliability. Much work is also being undertaken by the established US powerplant manufacturers and NASA into stratified-charged and turbocharged rotaries in place of avgas burning conventional piston engines. There is a lot happening on this R&D front and we will provide a major feature on this exciting subject in our June edition.

It’s Easy in Hindsight Dept.

Imagine if we had the benefit of hindsight, probably a quarter of the things we elect to do we would change in some form. Certainly, the board of Ansett would have most probably opted for the smaller Boeing 757 rather than the 200-seat class wide-boded 767 which enters service this winter. Burning around 30% less fuel per seat-mile than the 727-200s it would replace, the 757 would have been not only extremely fuel efficient but also of a size that would have ensured excellent revenue load factors. The primary reason Ansett at the time opted for the 767 was that they logically felt that they needed the glamour of a w1de-bod1ed airliner to compete with TAA’s A300. Little did they know that in 1983 Australia’s domestics would end up carrying about the same traffic as they did back in 1978. As we said, hindsight would be handy!

The Market Remains Flat

While the two domestics reported a relatively disappointing Christmas holiday uplift and a flat January it was interesting to note that load factors were increasing as TAA used its A300 on fewer sectors and both airlines to some extent resorted to the passenger’s nightmare – cancellations.

While traffic does not look set to improve greatly through 1983 is It really any wonder that airlines are attracting fewer passengers when fares increase in one year by 27% – two and a half times the current inflation rate? In the meantime, we note Telecom’s subtle advertisements informing us that interstate STD rates are now half what they were a few years back. When it costs sixty-four times as much to fly Sydney/Melbourne economy class return as an eight-minute weekday phone call, then the future competitor for the airlines is well and truly found in the upcoming ‘electronic office’.