Marc Joel Atrero

Register Review Forty aircraft are listed in the new allocation section this month and taking into account the monthly deletions, this represents a slight increase in the number of aeroplanes operated in Australia and brings the total to 10,636 including gliders. A good cross section of aviation is represented from balloons to another leased Boeing

Flying High As a Rolls-Royce test pilot in the fifties I certainly remember some unusual incidents which in retrospect are really quite funny. I remember one particularly amusing scene when we were carrying out performance work at 36,000ft in our Dart turboprop powered Douglas Dakota. Being unpressurised, the plane’s interior not unnaturally iced up and

Controller Shortage “Punky” is one of my excellent regular RAAF contacts. He is a fighter jock, and I will leave it to him to answer a question that has filtered in from a large number of military aircraft monitors, that is: “How are military tactical callsigns decided on; not the rootwords, but the numbers tagged

Controller Shortage The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is having difficulty holding onto its air traffic control officers. Due to the mass exodus of trained controllers to AirServices Australia (ASA), the RAAF has had to take extraordinary steps to maintain an operational air traffic service. Over recent years, the declining number of controllers has caused

Bogus Part Caused NZ R22 Crash A Robinson R22 which crashed into New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty in October killing its two occupants was fitted with a ‘bogus’ tail rotor blade. The rotor blade was salvaged from an R22 which crashed in California in 1993. An unauthorised repair was carried out on the blade which

Freedom Air Launches Air New Zealand wholly owned Mount Cook Group’s newly established charter airline, Freedom Air International, launched services between Australia and New Zealand on December 8. Freedom Air is initially offering twice weekly charters between Sydney and Auckland and weekly charters between Sydney/Christchurch, Sydney/Hamilton, Sydney/Wellington and Brisbane/Hamilton, which are operated by a Boeing