In general, the aviation community has greeted the appointment of Jeff Boyd as chair of the CASA board with enthusiasm. Boyd is a very experienced aviation person who is a former director of the Regional Aviation Association of Australia and former owner of Brindabella Airlines. The industry is viewing him as an insider in the palace. As an active chairman who has the support of the minister, there should be no more roadblocks at management level to implementing the Forysth recommendations. It is hoped both Boyd and DAS Mark Skidmore can overcome the change inertia inherent at lower levels within CASA.
After a year of growth, 2015 has opened with a quarter of soft delivery figures compared with 2014. Just as one sparrow does not make a spring, one quarter does not make a decline in growth. If the second quarter shows a similar result we can start to get worried. There were few good-news stories among the shipment figures, but one of them was the TBM 900 of which 11 aircraft were delivered against the five of the TBM 850 in Q1 2014. Could this aeroplane be that much of a leap over its predecessor? The aircraft features in the July-August 2015 print issue of Australian Flying, so you'll be able to make up your own mind. Congratulations also to Tecnam, who's new four-seater the P2010 made its first mark on the delivery figures.
In jet news this week, Pilatus' PC-24 versatile jet made a successful first flight and according to the test pilots, handled beautifully in the air. It will still be a couple of years before this aircraft enters service and Australia will be one of the first to see it as it starts operations with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Another announcement a bit out of the blue is that Tecnam is working on a jet trainer. The P Jet is an interesting beast and will be targeting the military trainer and civil sector. I feel they are up against it a bit; they'll be taking on some big companies with a lot of experience for military contracts, and none of those companies will be keen to surrender their markets easily.
Matt Hall is back on track this weekend in Chiba, Japan. After coming so close to his maiden win in Abu Dhabi, he and all the other pilots went through a forced three-month layoff. Naturally, Hall is straining at the lead to get back into the air and see if the team can grab their maiden win. But, he's not the only one. Home-town hero Yoshi Moruya is yet to grab a win and he's been showing bit of toe himself in previous races. What more incentive does a bloke need that to win in front of a home crowd? Still, with no jet lag involved, the ducks are all lined-up for a great result from Hall.
CASA tells me they have received 61 e-mails of feedback in response to the Part 61 letter DAS Mark Skidmore sent out. Further, all but about two of those have contained valuable input that they can work with. There is a feeling in the industry that CASA has been told enough and calling for more feedback is just stalling for time. There is some merit to that argument, but I think that for the first time we have people in Canberra who are listening, and it's good for us all that fresh feedback has been called for. That way we have a chance of getting our message through en clair rather that having the new board be presented with old feedback that has been compromised after being processed by the CASA bureaucracy.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch