Make or break

Regional aviation must criss-cross our huge country delivering staff to resource sites, loved ones to their families, medical staff for emergencies and urgent freight wherever it is required. Engineering teams must work long hours when inevitably everything doesn’t go exactly to plan but the aircraft has to be flight ready by 0600. Alongside them are the operations teams constantly adjusting their workflow to meet their scheduled departures and arrivals. On top of it all is management worrying about how they are going to pay for it. It is a dynamic, exciting and sometimes exhausting environment.

When sitting in some government meetings you can get the impression the public needs to be protected from aviation, that it is a source of real worry rather than being a force for good. The constant criticism around aircraft noise often beggars belief. It is nearly always forgotten that numbers of airfields have been closed over the years to accommodate growing populations.

“It is a dynamic, exciting and exhausting environment.”

For example, Adelaide’s original airfield was at Hendon in the north-western suburbs. It was closed and a new airfield built at Parafield followed by the larger West Beach Airport. Ignoring buffer zones in the airfield plans, some councils, always hungry for rate-payers, allow residential construction right up to the airfield boundary. Wouldn’t you think by now we would have learnt that buildings within the buffer zones should be commercial, not residential? Common law has long established that if ‘you come to the nuisance’ you have little to complain about.

The legacy airfields across the country are very much national assets but they have often not kept pace with aircraft development. Modern regional aircraft, which tend to be larger and heavier than in the past, require better runways or they cannot operate to that port under their type certificate without an exemption.

While the roads lobby quite rightly call for our sometimes appalling country roads to be improved, voices should be heard clamouring to upgrade our regional runways.

Two examples at the ends of the spectrum on this issue are Wagga Wagga and Goulburn airfields. The Wagga Council’s vision and commitment is delivering a first-rate product to operators and its local community, with plans for further development. The latter was in dire straits and neglected when the local council owned it and by all reports has gone backwards under private ownership.

While there are many challenges facing aviation, the upcoming election is an opportunity to see if the government and the opposition have been listening to industry.

The 2009 Aviation White Paper appeared to ignore most industry ideas even though it was touted as a breakthrough document. Overseas reaction to the Paper was disturbing. ‘Nothing to fear there’ was the first reaction I received from aviation industry representatives in a neighbouring country.

Unperturbed, in recent times the industry has been pouring new ideas into the offices of ministers and backbenchers. In a few weeks both political parties will need to release their election transport policies. The acid test will be if any ideas from industry are contained within them. The industry is prepared to wait and see but will be bitterly disappointed if it is ignored a second time.