– Steve Hitchen
Bankstown operators, pilots and aircraft owners will need to wait until the year has turned before they learn if the OAR has managed to craft a plan that breathes optimism back into their airport. OAR's revised proposal for a VFR corridor linking their airport to a practical training area has already been torpedoed once, which has left Bankstown on wood when it comes to the future of the training industry there. CASA has held some closed-door consultations with operators, and it looks like the new concept will be a one-way corridor. There aren't too many parallels for this in Australia without an accompanying contra-directional route somewhere, so I expect the design is more complex than that. But now I feel there is a need to put some pressure on CASA over this. Within the GA community there is an adage (and GA has plenty of those) that says "There is no Plan C". What this means is that if Plan A fails, Plan B must be fail-safe. This is where OAR is at right now: under an imposed demand for a corridor that the GA community can endorse as safe and use practically. Yes, this is totally unfair considering that OAR is not under any legal obligation to do anything. The demon in this drama is the Federal Government that gave absolute priority to Western Sydney International even though they were told repeatedly and forcefully what the impact on Bankstown would be.
It was predictable that the Department of Home Affairs would quietly euthanise the idea of a single-issuing body (SIB) for ASICs and MSICs. Although it was the best and easiest solution for many issues extant in the ASIC process, it stood to put private companies out of business, and that fact that only Canberra and Adelaide Airports transitioned demonstrates what the aviation industry thought of the idea. Putting the SIB to permanent rest throws the obligation back onto Home Affairs to reform the application and issuing process to correct some glaring problems, one of which is to direct government effort to the areas of highest risk. Time to get real: if they want that outcome they could achieve it by removing the ASIC requirement for air crew, which has never since the ASIC scheme was spawned ensured any form of extra security. All it does is redirect money from a struggling GA pool to government coffers. The Aviation Safety Regulation Review (ASRR) of 2014 took the extraordinary step of recommending a review of ASIC demands even though it was outside the ASRR's scope, so strong was the swell of industry opinion against it. We should also not be ignoring that other jurisdictions around the world, including those who have been targeted, do not require an ASIC equivalent. The ASIC was born in the post-2001 crucible of fear over aircraft being used in terrorist attacks, and a review in a reasonable light of day is probably well overdue. However, governments tend to get drunk on income streams, so don't hold your breath.
Nominations for the 2025 CASA Wings Awards closed a week ago, which means that you have all done your bit and now its up to the judging panel to get to work. Over the next few weeks those of us on the panel will be reading, review, comparing, analysing and proselytising nominations in all categories until we come up some level of consensus over the winners. And if you think nominating is hard, you should try judging. Winners will be formally announced in the March-April issue of Australian Flying, which is due in your letter box mid February. And if you put in a submission to one of the categories, thank you. It doesn't really need to be said that without your contribution there would be no CASA Wings Awards.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch