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The new charge is being aimed at paying for all airport related Customs, Immigration and Quarantine services in addition to being a significant net depositor for Treasury. Not surprisingly the airlines are less than impressed, particularly as yet there does not appear to be a concise procedure established by the Government as to precisely how the new fees will be collected, monitored and paid by the airlines. If, for instance, the fee is levied on the airline ticket at time of writing, how will it be monitored when so many tickets and packages are sold abroad? The airlines will also have to become tax collectors using already overstretched resources to do what is really a government task.

Back in the late eighties the airlines won a High Court challenge against the Federal Government over its ill thought out $5 arrivals tax. The powerful Board of Airline Representatives, which represents all international carriers serving Australia, will no doubt issue a similar challenge unless the Government moves quickly to provide a low work, logical method of receiving, monitoring and paying the tax. One airline source told AA that there was as much chance of attaining this as teaching a cat to dance.

Government To Proceed With Airport Selloff Inquiry

The Government has allocated almost $1m to investigate the complexities of selling offthe 23 existing FAC airports. The scoping studies grant will be split between the Dept of Finance and Transport with the objective being to finalise the study before the ALP’s annual conference in September where the selloffwill be debated at length. Transport Minister Laurie Brereton has advised ALP left wing members (who are firmly against the sellofl) that the sales should raise around $1.9bn. Industry observers however are confident that the FAC, which has listed assets of $2.14bn, is worth between $2.5bn and $3bn if sold off as a going concern with the higher figure being almost guaranteed ifthe Government forgave the FAC its ‘paper’ debt prior to privatisation (refer Reece for more data). The Government hopes to raise $4.4bn over the coming four years through selling offASTA, its remaining 75%sharein Qantas, ANL and the AIDC.

Also approved in the Budget were additional funds for fast tracking Badgery’s Creek to long haul jet standards by 2000. The 1800m GA runway has been ditched in favour of a full 7 4 7 capable 2900m runway due to be operational during 1998/99. Badgery’s will get $73m for this task with $38m being spent in 1996/97 and a further $35m in 97/98.

Fuel Cost Increases To Feed Safety Tax

Announced inthe May 10 Budget was a le a litre increase in tax on both avgasand avtur toraise $18m in 1994/95. This, plus an extra $1m being levied on internal airlines, and other sundry registration and operational costs will raise projected revenue to $24.3m. The Government, in a previous agreement, will fund $22.8m for its share of the Safety Tax which is estimated to cost around $60m annually.

Again the major airlines are vehemently against this tax as they contribute around $14m of the $18m expected to be paid next year. General Aviation on the other hand states that it does not really use much of the extensive RPT infrastructure required by the airlines (large and small) and should therefore not be levied further for services it doesn’t use or require. Meanwhile, the CAA is still working with industry to develop a final method for raising the $60m per annum required to finance its safety related services (originally deemed a Government responsibility by their own reckoning) and hopes for this to be finalised by Julynextyear.

Defence Spending Drops To Record Low

As a proportion of GDP, the 1994/95 Defence budget has slipped from 2.3% of GDP to just 2.1%, representing a real term decrease of $48m. The total 1994/95 budget will be $9.64bn with the Navy’s Collins class submarines, Anzac frigates and the RAAF’s Jindalee OTHR being the largest capital expenditures. Numbers will be cut slightly, Army losing 378 positions to 26,335, Navy 107 to 15,160 and Air Force 161 to 17,880. Defence civilian numbers will also be cut. One logical ray of hope is that Defence will now be able to carry over as much as $100m each year in unspent funding. A full in-depth Budget report as it relates to Defence, and in particular to aviation, will appear in our next issue.

Fla Now A Turboprop

The proposed Euroflag European Future Large Aircraft (FLA) military transport aircraft project has had a fundamental change in its configuration from four turbofans to four turboprops. The change comes from the need to cut costs to make the project a little more palatable to its main sponsors, the French and German governments. It has also been found that the desired short field performance from unpaved airstrips can be more readily achieved with turboprops.

The FLA was originally proposed as a turboprop but an early change was made to jet engines. Always intended as a competitor for the ubiquitous Lockheed C-130 Hercules II, the new configuration puts the FLA firmly in a similar category to that aircraft and the new Antonov An-70. For its part, Lockheed has responded to the change by saying the FLA is now “another Hercules”. Another possible reasonfor the change is tomake the aircraft moreattractive to Britain. The RAF is looking to replace its ageingC-130KHerculesfleet and has already expressed a preference for the new updated C-130J version. (ReferNewsdesk this issue). Perhaps – as Flight lnternational’s Roger Bacon has sensibly suggested – the best idea might be to put the Shorts Belfast back into production and save a hell of a lot of eurofrancs …

Safety Review Criticised

A report commissioned by the Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA) and prepared by Worksafe Australia has criticised a CAA draft paper on pilot duty hours and described it as “deviant and psychophysiolically unsound” and “seriously deficient. The CA.Ns draft proposal seeks to extend the maximum duty period for pilots to 22 hours from the previous maximum of 16. It is based on draft regulations by the European Joint Aviation Authority. The current maximum duty time of 16 hours usually includes no more than nine hours actually flying an aircraft, and according to Worksafe this is a sensible maximum. Beyond that, it says “performance is impaired and frequencies of significant errors increase rapidly. Also criticised is the CAAreport’s proposal to allow up to 60 hours’ duty in a seven day period and 100 hours in 14 days. Worksafe says that aviation medicine research indicates 55 and 80 hours, respectively, are reasonable limits.

Opposition Attacks Caa On ‘shonky Operators’

The crash of an Oxley Airlines Piper Navajo near Young in June last year with the loss of seven lives has prompted some lively discussion, the latest from the Federal Opposition’s transport spokesman, John Sharp. The accident occurred in Mr Sharp’s electorate and under parliamentary privilege he has made a number of serious accusations. Among them: that the accident resulted from civil aviation authorities allowing “shonky” operators to continue flying; that Monarch was “a shonky operator with a track record that should have set off alarm bells throughout the CAA”; that “Monarch repeatedly failed to observe air safety regulations and was known throughout the industry for this and it was twice recommended for grounding and yet the CAA let them [sic] fly”; and that the company was technically bankrupt and resorted to “irregular methods” to obtain fuel and spare parts.

Perhaps the most serious of Mr Sharp’s allegations is that some operators offered free flying time to CAA flight operations inspectors in return for more lenient treatment of safety regulation breaches. This presumably relates to the quite proper and legitimate practice of CAA airworthiness inspectors sometimes flying as copilots on commercial flights in order to keep them up to speed on procedures and technology. At the time of writing the CAA had not commented on Mr Sharp’s accusations. The Bureau of Air Safety Investigation’s report on the accident should be released by the time these words are read.

Badgery’s Creek Gets Long Runway And Uninspired Name

The Federal Government has announced it will speed up development of Sydney’s new airport at Badgery’s Creek and the construction of a 2900 metre runway capable of handling jet airliners. The airport will also be known as Sydney West Airport. The runway is expected to be commissioned in 1999, and according to the government, will provide the opportunity for the subsequent development of 6 Australian Aviation June 1994 appropriate terminal capacity by 2000. The decision to build this runway means the originally planned 1800 metre general aviation runway will now not be built.

When announcing the new runway, Transport Minister Laurie Brereton also announced the new airport would be officially called Sydney West Airport. This is not only an uninspiring name but also is a lost opportunity to honour an appropriate person from Australia’s aviation history. Indeed, this very journal suggested some two years ago that naming the airport after Charles Ulm or someone of that ilk would be the way to go after an airline industry group had been set up in Sydney to try and make this happen.

Nagoya Crash Update

Additional information has been released about the China Airlines Airbus A300 crash at Nagoya in late April (refer Newsdesk this issue), and most of it is very disturbing. For starters, the copilot was found to have “a level of alcohol in his blood”, which might go some way towards explaining the chaos in the cockpit of the doomed airliner.

According to overseas reports, the captain realised the A300 was too high on the approach and engaged the automatic go-around control, a system which automatically trims the aircraft properly, increases power and allows it to climb away from a missed approach. The copilot apparently decided he wanted to complete the landing and tried to override the aircraft’s computers (which were responding to the goaround command) by coarse handling of the controls. This led to the aircraft not really being under control and a complete breakdown of discipline in the cockpit. The result was that at a height of 1100 feet, the A300 pitched up to no less than 36 degrees angle of attack, the airspeed decayed to just 78 knots (145kmh), and the aircraft stalled, hitting the ground tail first.

Authorities have already announced the accident was no fault of the aircraft, as has been the case in the Aeroflot A310 crash in Russia in March (refer p6, May 94 AA). Evidence collected from the flight data recorder confirms earlier reports that neither pilot was at the controls of the A310 at the time of the accident and the aircraft was being ‘flown’ by an unauthorised person, believed to be the captain’s 15 year old son. High control input rates were recorded, resulting in banks taking the aircraft past the vertical and nose up attitudes of 80 degrees.

Norfolk To Form Own Airline?

Norfolk Island business interests are teaming with an established Australian mainland operator to propose forming their own airline. The proposed airline, named Norfolk Pacific, is intended to bring better air services to the remote island which relies heavily on tourism for its economic viability. Presently Norfolk is served only by Ansett with direct jet services from Sydney and Brisbane. The new airline would use a BAe 146-100 in a 65-73 seat configuration in addition to later possibly bringing in a 737-300 for expanded operations between the east coast capitals cities and also for a range of innovative point to point charters.

AA believes that Ansett is not unsupportive of the proposal and would work with the new airline to assist its operations. The airline stresses that it isn’t interested in competing against either Ansett or Qantas but is aiming instead to augment their operations with services to regions that neither airline is economically comfortable with. This is not that dissimilar to the role undertaken by the then Australian Airlines when it used the resources of Australian Airlink to operate niche services that the primary airline was not best equipped to undertake profitably. Ansett probably would not miss its Norfolk Island obligation providing it could pick up any oncarriage from the new airline, something that would be fait accompli if the new carrier was using the Ansett CRS system as it proposes. The BAe 146 is presently in the UK being refurbished following operations in Africa and if the operation proceeds it could be in Australia before July.

Tribute To Airshow Duo

A memorial airshow will be held at Luskintyre airfield near Maitland on June 25 in honour of the memory of Lace Maxwell and Robert Copas who were tragically killed there on May 1. The duo were accomplished airshow performers and were helping to raise funds for CanTeen, an organisation for teenagers living with cancer. Their Tiger Moth wing walking routine was always a big crowd draw and the duo had flown at their own expense from Queensland to help raise funds for the charity airshow.

Both died when their Tiger Moth suffered engine failure at low level and spun into the ground while attempting a forced landing. If you would like to attend the June 25 memorial event or are able to help out in any way then please call Dr Alan Coulthard on (049) 52 3876.