Stop Press

AA Comment: Congratulations to Boyd Munro and his team on their victory, we wish them well and sincerely hope that they can achieve their stated goals of making the CAA more accountable and responsive to GA. However, that said we have two strong reservations about the victory. Firstly, to our knowledge it was the first time that a person has won power in an aviation association election in Australia through using a seemingly limitless budget to garner votes. This is neither illegal nor unethical though it does bring into play the question of how the ‘little people’ can ever hope to compete against either a person or group that has the considerable resources behind them that the Munro team carried. Boyd even published his own professionally produced newsletter, the Weekend Warrior, which was regularly mailed to every AOPA member, to push his cause most successfully. This would have had to conservatively cost many thousands of dollars, certainly beyond the realm of the regular aviator or committee aspirant.

The second point is significantly more important. Boyd Munro heads what he calls the ‘Freedom to Fly Responsibly’ team. Fair enough, but then on Monday February 20 he embarked upon a flight that in our opinion did nothing to elevate the status of GA in the community whilst deliberately serving to ultimately denigrate the existing AOPA leadership. According to the CAA, at 4.15 am that morning he contacted Sydney Flow Control to obtain a clearance into KSA for around 8.30 that morning, right in the middle of the morning’s peak on one of the busiest days of the week with bad weather forecast at Australia’s most important airport. Sydney Flow advised him that the first available KSA slot was at 12.05 pm. ATC also advised that he could try and would need to be prepared to divert to Bankstown. ATC states in an official CAA release of that afternoon that “the pilot appeared to accept this quite readily”.

At 5.30 am Mr Munro submitted a flight plan and the aircraft departed Essendon at 6.13 am for a planned arrival in Sydney at 8.31 am. The CAA then says that the pilot of the Navajo contacted ATC approaching Bindook, a holding point 80 km southwest of Sydney. He was advised that because of traffic at Sydney he would have to land at Bankstown. At this stage Mr Munro had the logical alternative of diverting to Bankstown or Camden but chose to hold, then fly on to Orange. After refuelling at Orange he then proceeded to Sydney where he landed during the afternoon off-peak time.

On that Monday morning between 7.00 and 11.00 am the CAA advises us that scheduled arrivals totalled 115. This included 44 aircraft of Boeing 767 or larger each capable of carrying between 200 and 400 passengers, often from flights lasting upwards of 12 hours. By coincidence this writer was scheduled that morning from Canberra to Sydney on the 9.20 am flight. This sector is usually around 25 minutes but due to congestion and bad weather at KSA that morning this flight did not arrive at KSA till nearly 11.00 am. Even with a delayed departure under strict slot control from Sydney our full 737 had to orbit Bindook for a quarter hour due to the obviously worsening situation at KSA.

Boyd Munro had a field day with the non-aviation dailies and electronic media who quickly took the bait of his four hours of holding to get into Sydney. His primary objective was to highlight his case for free access for all pilots into airports like Sydney and to get publicity for his AOPA election campaign by focussing the attention of members on the logical fact that the Association was unable to bully the CAA, Minister or whoever into getting him into KSA ahead of thousands of paying passengers in scheduled airliners.

Australian Aviation firmly believes that this is an immature and unrealistic approach to GA gaining access to Australia’s major airport at peak times. There is a big difference even between a privately owned Navajo with two or three people aboard and an RPT Chieftain flying in seven or eight paying passengers on a scheduled airline flight from rural NSW. To compare the right of the private light twin entry over large capacity jets at a primary airport is nothing more than ridiculous to say the least. Wake turbulence considerations also generally mean that very small aircraft operating in the vicinity of heavy jets also require more airspace within the airport area of influence than would a large jet, hence even more precious time is wasted by the light aircraft that uses the primary airport at peak times. The wake vortex created by a 747 is for instance in the region of 15 km whilst long final approach speeds are also generally incompatible. If this is considered Responsible Flying then I would hate to think of what would be termed irresponsible flying! We certainly wish the new team at AOPA well but sincerely hope that in the process of trying to effect change they don’t turn this most valuable and essential General Aviation lobby group into little more than a headline grabbing media circus.

Senate Enquiry Into Nomad Crash

A Senate Inquiry into the crash of RAAF Nomad N24A A18-401 at Mallala in March 1990 was due to commence as this issue closed following strong representations by the fatally injured pilot’s family. The inquiry will investigate the culpability of the RAAF in light of the known fact that the aircraft’s tailplane was badly cracked before it took off. The tailplane failed when the Nomad was in the air. The pilot’s family contends that the RAAF knew the aircraft was not airworthy at the time of the crash and is therefore negligent, a position which has tended to be confirmed by subsequent investigations. An analysis of the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s report into this accident was featured in our September issue last year.

Sydney Tower Opened

The new control tower at Sydney Airport was scheduled to be opened as this edition hit the newsstands, bringing with it the capability to fully exploit the airport’s new parallel runway. The maximum number of flight movements per hour will increase from 55 before the tower opened to 70 and will further increase to 80 early next year when the airport’s new parallel approach radar is operational. The Civil Aviation Authority has gone to great lengths to let the public know there will be an increase in traffic as part of the PR exercise associated with the current protests and blockades over noise at the airport since the opening of the ‘third’ runway. The CAA has said that despite the increased traffic, noise will be reduced when the new tracking radar comes on line.

Several changes to operational standards have been made in order to minimise the noise disturbance to affected residents. From mid-March, aircraft have been able to takeoff over Botany Bay with a 10 kt tailwind rather than the previous 5 kt limit, while the operators of aircraft straying from strictly defined flightpaths will face fines of up to $25,000 for a corporation and $5,000 for an individual.