Recce

Much of GA is now politically represented by the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association. AOPA, like most aviation organisations, had gone about as far as it could in trying to plead its case to Minister Brereton. It will certainly have a better relationship with the new team who at least understand the problems of GA through several years of listening to each organisation’s concerns. This will be a pleasant change, although naturally AOPA, and similar organisations, will win some battles and lose others. Hopefully the difference will be that they are at least heard rather than their opinions ignored. There should now also be the potential to reinvigorate the Australian light aircraft design community with the adoption of the US Experimental Aircraft Category to facilitate the design and test flying of prototypes that could well lead to production if successful. GA worldwide is on the verge of a measured but confident increase in activity with both Piper and Cessna ramping up the production of light aircraft once more. Australia has much to offer, but we will never get there under the existing framework of big-budget development programmes. By at least taking the first step and embracing the proven US system, we can at least give flight to some innovative designs that truly deserve to become airborne.

In the big league of airlines there should also be some changes for the better. Major amongst them being the remaking of Kingsford Smith Airport as just that — an international airport instead of the international joke it had become these past two years as it masqueraded as little more than a political football. Politically left-aligned councils will have a go at closing the east-west runway again but might find this difficult as up until late 1994 there was no complaint with the operation of that runway. It was deliberately made a political hot potato for parochial reasons and in the process made aircraft noise a major issue amongst people who had probably never previously considered it a nuisance. Indeed, it will take many years to repair the damage done to the overall image of aviation amongst the residents of Sydney, and elsewhere, now that they know that every flightpath can seemingly bring with it a gravy train of free goodies if their local lobby is vocal enough.

One way to limit the noise, in any direction, from KSA is to reduce the overall number of movements. We have been generally more in favour of allowing the free market to be the judge as to the level of services required, though at Sydney there is certainly the scope for applying slots to aircraft departures during the peak periods. The Coalition will limit KSA to a maximum of 80 movements an hour anyway. What slot control will do will be to rationalise the great number of co-destination services to Brisbane and Melbourne from Sydney. There won’t, in reality, be a diminution in services, rather a logical increase in capacity using larger aircraft on fewer frequencies. At present, Qantas and Ansett schedule eight to ten weekday services each between 0600 and 0900 from Sydney to Melbourne, and a little less to Brisbane. Do you really need 20 aircraft flying from A to B in a three-hour period? Of course not. Ansett alone has four services departing between 0600 and 0700!

Of all these departures, how many actually rotate not only within ten minutes of their scheduled departure time but also in harmony with the flights scheduled immediately before and after them? The answer to the first question is just a few, and to the second, almost none. By cutting back on the plethora of 737s and A320s and replacing them with larger 767/A300 aircraft, both airlines can shift more people, at less cost to themselves, on time and with less inconvenience to the passenger than by slavishly filling their schedules with flights just to try and win a game of cheap one-upmanship with the competition. Peak period domestic slots between the major east coast ports will be good for Sydney and will make the airport more efficient overall.

Finally, there remains the sale of the airports. We have written on this at length and will stick to our guns that it would appear far more intelligent to privatise the entire Federal Airports Corporation as a highly profitable entity than to break up the 22 airports and sell them individually. GA will be the ultimate loser if the latter course is embraced, while some of the smaller ports will also find it difficult to secure the long-term investment dollars necessary to remain viable as key regional transport hubs. To simply flog off Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane to the highest bidder and throw away the rest is not, in our humble opinion, a very smart move when you have the option of privatising (to Australian ownership only) the entire operation in a float that would probably raise in the order of $2.5bn. Mind you, until now, the Coalition did not have access to the important Department of Finance scoping study that had provided an options list to the previous Government.

There is much that needs to be undertaken to improve the lot of aviation in this country. The new Government has a clear mandate for implementing an agenda of constructive change for the better for our industry. We will watch their efforts carefully and, as always, won’t be shy at questioning their actions if they should wander from this course.