– Steve Hitchen
Momentum is starting to build to correct a training anomaly: that new CPLs emerging from academies are ready for the airlines, but not for the hard-scrabble life of a GA charter pilot. People trained on G1000 cockpits are not ready to face an array of steam gauges with little installed navigation equipment, and don't understand that a charter pilot's duties go beyond flying the aeroplane. Non-academy schools have been turning out GA-ready pilots for many years, simply by their fleets being legacy airframes with little modern upgrades; exactly what CPLs are likely to face in their first GA job. A well-worn C210, C206, Baron or Lance/Saratoga are the machines of the Australian charter world, especially in the NT and WA, but academy-trained pilots generally haven't been exposed to these aircraft. The emerging answer is GA Ready courses that adapt academy-trained pilots to the ad-hoc and impromptu life of GA charter. And it's the academies that are launching these programs, revealing that they are finally recognising the shortcomings of airline-focused training. Regional operators have known of the problem for years; CPLs fresh from the urban academies needed a lot of re-training to make them fit for purpose. With the urban academies acting to correct the problem, hopefully charter operators will start to see more CVs that give them confidence in the pilot's training.
Digital control towers–where ATC is not physically at the airport they are controlling–may be a revolution in Australia, but it's not an unexpected one. Airservices Australia started trials in 2020, and some airports overseas are already controlled remotely, most notably London City Airport. With the announcement that Western Sydney International (WSI) will be built with a digital tower the way is now open for Airservices to think about locations where the cost of maintaining a full control tower is prohibitive. Airports like Albury, Alice Springs, Avalon, Mackay, Hamilton Island and Tamworth may be candidates for digital towers; they all have the need for tower control, but not necessarily the justifying movements. It all sounds like a logic forward step, but that step may be hindered by the obstacle of conservatism. The underlying philosophy of digital towers is that no loss of safety is incurred and that traffic flows can still be maintained. However, there is also the belief that nothing can replace a pair of eyes looking through binoculars, fed by fears of computer glitches and a reduction in situational awareness. But look at it like this: London City had 46,000 movements in 2022 using a digital tower, and has a cap of 45 movements per hour. You don't set caps if your system is not capable of dealing with them, which means the London City experience is a good measure of how digital towers handle traffic load. Obviously Airservices has confidence in the technology and is prepared to use WSI as a sort of guinea pig, a controversial move at an airport that seems to gather controversy around it at almost every step.
Airshows Downunder at Shellharbour last weekend contained most of the possible scenarios air show organisers can be confronted with. There was rain and low cloud on the Saturday forcing some flying displays to be canceled, last-minute aircraft unserviceability, heat and bright sunshine beating down on the crowd and the flying program running late. It had it all, but still put on a respectable air show that was great fun all around. With AMDA Foundation now at the helm, there were concerns that the show would become a mini Avalon that would just not work. If you went looking you could find some signs of that, but as far as the attendees go, it was one of the best flying displays ever put on at that airport, which is saying a lot when you consider some of the schedules put on in the days of Wings over Illawarra. AMDA now has two years to analyse the failures and successes from Shellharbour and plan ahead for further development and growth of the event. I am looking forward to 2026 and what AMDA can make of the show in the future.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch