Australian Aviation

Twenty-six aircraft are listed in the New Allocations section this month including the first Kaman K-Max helicopter to be seen in Australia. Kaman Helicopters, best known in this country for the RAN Seasprite debacle, was founded in 1945 by American Charles Kaman who was researching a better way of overcoming the inherent instability of early

Election represents a watershed opportunity The upcoming federal election is likely to be a watershed whatever the result. Compared to other industries, aviation is so weighed down by over-regulation, red-tape and bloated bureaucracy it is something of a miracle that it survives at all. There are no government cash hand-outs, no union campaigns calling for

“My earliest aircraft memories were of the Mustang that put on a display at the opening of Coonabarabran Airport in about 1964. Pulling up vertically from the Warkton Valley (Coonabarabran’s Airport is built on a plateau and it was a good party trick for an aircraft to approach out of sight below ground level, the

Striking the balance between quality and quantity in air training The French couturier Pierre Cardin reportedly dismissed criticisms that his fashions were too expensive with the response, “You’ll remember the quality long after you’ve forgotten the cost”. Cardin’s attitude could equally serve as a guiding principle for training air force pilots. The aphorism that ‘quantity

Inflight refuelling when and where you need it The fine art of air-to-air refuelling was developed in the period immediately following WW2 as tensions rose between the western allies and the Soviet-led eastern bloc. But the ability to refuel inflight is not restricted to the superpowers, with second and third tier militaries adopting the capability

Network Aviation’s pace-setting role in the Western Australia charter market. As vaunted as the Virgin Group’s acquisition was of Skywest earlier this year, Qantas pre-dated the deal by Qantas more than two years. Although big news in the Western Australian mining community, but with much less fanfare, Qantas announced in December 2010 it was purchasing