Recce

The lack of terminal access and the time frame imposed on authorising a new airline is perhaps the most critical problem. As outlined on page 18 of our January edition (and to be fully covered in our next issue in an in-depth feature), there will be a maximum of two gates each made available at both KSA and Tullamarine by Ansett and Australian. In the other cities the problem is not crucial but those cities are also not the very hub of the total domestic airline system.

While the two gates (assuming two major jet entrants) will satisfy the new airline’s immediate aspirations the catch is simply that of the large number of proposed carriers, none will know who will be able to operate from these gates till March 1990, or barely six months prior to the start of proposed services. Now, as any businessman would tell you, but apparently totally lost on the Government and its bureaucracy, is the fact that no carrier could meaningfully discuss the acquisition of up to $100m worth of equipment and the employment of hundreds of highly trained people till they have an assurance that they will be able to actually operate come November 1, 1990. To expect them to get an entire infrastructure established in six months is beyond being ludicrous and truly should be the subject of an investigation to ascertain how these unbelievably naive decisions are made in the first place. It smacks of the same level of professional incompetence that was so markedly apparent during the Coastwatch debacle of 1987 while also playing directly into the hands of the existing airline operators.

The second problem concerns a general lack of skilled people.

Airlines are very labour intensive and, as an example of what is required just to ruri two MD-80 jets, Brian Grey’s 1983 study for the then East-West Airlines he headed, established that they would require 567 additional positions just to cater for these two aircraft. This included 80 Flight Attendants, 16 Captains and 14 First Officers in addition to 33 additional people in an already established engineering base. That’s just two aircraft, any serious new entrant would have to launch with a fleet of at least half a dozen, so how can they realistically have such an infrastructure in being in just six months from an employment base that by and large does not exist?

As our article elsewhere in this issue on the acute shortage of skilled engineers reveals, there is no easy solution to this worldwide problem. Where, for instance, three new entrants, up to a thousand trained people, will get them from

in Australia, Is a question that has no answer. Even Qantas is nowadays being forced to have some selective maintenance carried out overseas while the existing domestics’ engineering divisions quite naturally are not going to do a competitor’s work under contract.

Brick Wall No. 3 concerns the worsening situation within the CAA’s Airworthiness Division. The simple problem is (as we outlined in our special Airworthiness feature in the last issue) that there are not enough in-the-field Airworthiness Surveyors and engineers to cope with today’s commitments, let alone the perceived boom that will come with deregulation. Since our January article we have been inundated with unsolicited responses from disgruntled CAA employees as to the extent of this critical problem of ensuring that aircraft and aircraft maintenance organisations are checked and operating as required by law. Not that the vast majority of operators aren’t, but it is a priority matter that Airworthiness Directives, etc are professionally monitored to ensure Australia’s excellent air safety record is maintained in the years to come. They all cited a much needed streamlining of the presently cumbersome, and often adversarial, first of type certification procedures, with an allocation of greater resources to the real end of putting more airworthiness officers in the field and not at a desk.

Over the past three years the number of Airworthiness Surveyors has dropped from 183 to 144. This does not take into account that 15 of the remaining core are over 60 years of age and already due to retire while an additional 24 will retire in the coming two years. Australian Aviation also believes that of the six top ranking Airworthiness Surveyors in NSW Region, five will be retiring before the introduction of deregulation. A recent nationwide advertising campaign by the CM to attract new Airworthiness Surveyors and Engineers netted just one entrant! And all this at a time when the GA fleet is ageing due to the chronic lack of new aircraft and deregulation could-effectively increase by as much as 50% the number of new jets operated domestically by the mid nineties.

The roots of the Surveyors problems come directly from the CM’s inability to offer a viable pay structure. On present estimates they could leave tomorrow and receive up to $15,000 more per annum from any of a dozen airlines or facilities which would rush to employ them. Furthermore, the standard of morale within the CM is now so low that most do. not see any real solutions to their problems owing to what they see as senior management paralysis.

A recent memo from the National Institution of Airworthiness Surveyors states the problem more appropriately. “The decline in control of airworthiness has occurred due to no long-term . or short-term planning by the senior management of the CAA and endorsed by the Government. In particular the Heads of the Airworthiness Branch have allowed the tried and proven methods of airworthiness to diminish in preference to the cost recovery programme. This present management has the confidence or respect of the Airworthiness Surveyors and must be held responsible for the (then) current industrial situation”. Often this magazine is criticised for being overly critical of the CAA and its predecessors but in reality we hear much more virulent criticism every week from its own employees!

So in less than a year and a half deregulation of Australia’s domestic airline system will become fact, except perhaps that due to the above, Ansett and Australian will still have it all to themselves.