AOPA’s Airspace Backflip

Aopa Backflips On Latest Airspace Proposals

In an apparent backflip, the new President of The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Dick Smith, in an editorial in the June issue of the AOPA magazine, is now endorsing the latest CAA airspace proposal.

In the editorial he states that the proposal “will result in an internationally harmonised system with high levels of safety, maximum flying freedom and lowest cost”. Less than a month before his editorial went to print Dick Smith was vehement in his opposition to the new scheme, informing your correspondent over the telephone that he would press the AOPA Committee to pull out of the Australian Aviation Industry Association (AAIA) if the new scheme was introduced. At that time he was still maintaining that it was not in accordance with the ICAO system of categorising airspace (particularly the proposed IFR service in G airspace), and that the proposed Mandatory Broadcast Zones (MBZs) were unsafe. He stated that he would be mounting a bigger and better media campaign to kill the new scheme which, he maintained, had all the hallmarks of the unions winning again.

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