More misses than hits

The Aviation Workforce Skills Study by Australian Industry Standards had the opportunity to clearly identify that both LAMEs and pilots were in short supply and that government had clear options for addressing these potentially crippling threats.

Instead, while accepting the inescapable conclusion that LAMEs will be in short supply for the foreseeable future, the study comes up with the absolutely laughable conclusion that the occupation of commercial pilot “cannot be qualified as being in shortage due to the large number of candidates with basic licences and skill-sets acquired as recreational or GA pilots”.

It is difficult to imagine a more ludicrous statement.

What is the age of all of these pilots who have not already pursued a commercial aviation career? How many of them can get a Class 1 medical? Most importantly, how many of them are even interested in a commercial aviation career – especially if they are in aviation as a hobby or for pleasure? And if this is an alternative pool of untapped potential, why are there still very real pilot shortages being felt by different sectors, including aerial application? The real airswing, however, is in the complete denial of the report that to encourage more people to get into an aviation career – especially as a pilot – the country must address the obvious lack of funding support for pursuing a commercial pilot’s licence and relevant rating.

Not every pilot wants or needs a degree to be an asset to the industry. There are more pathways into the industry than through the RTOs and universities who can qualify their clients for HECs, while CASA-approved flying training schools cannot.

To add insult to injury, at the ‘roundtable’ convened by the Minister at Avalon Airshow, the industry was lectured that there were not enough women in the industry. We agree. But there was no shame or responsibility accepted by the Minister that it is government policies and lack of training funding support driving this and other shortcomings in the aviation workforce.

Industry does need to do better in competing for the hearts and minds of young people, but we desperately need a workable support framework that puts aviation on a level playing field with other careers.

Not wanting to sound like a broken record, but the answer to these challenges, which industry has seen coming for years, lie in the implementation of The Australian Aviation Associations Forum policies on privatising Airservices along the Canadian model and investing half the proceeds into aviation training and related support.

It’s not often a government has a united industry both identifying the problem and providing a fully-costed and very practical policy response.

And meantime, the Forsyth recommendations for a better regulatory system seem to be disappearing like a mirage in the face of intransigence from the areas most in need of reform.

The aviation skills report does provide some useful insights – 90,000 people directly employed by the aviation industry; contribution to the economy of net $15. 3 billion each year; chronic shortage of flight instructors and flight examiners.

But the misses are far bigger than the hits – failure to identify the lack of access to HECS as a critical issue, the incongruity between CASA-approved schools not being able to automatically access HECS and others, the spurious claim that there is no pilot shortage due to lots of recreational pilots.

AAAA Convention – Fire and Ag

AAAA has included a firefighting day and speakers in its annual convention on May 31 and June 1-2 in Adelaide at the Stamford Grand Hotel in Glenelg.

Registration forms and draft program are available on the AAAA website for this premier annual event featuring a full trade show, great speakers and preceding training days.

Not every pilot wants or needs a degree to be an asset.