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Houston (Skidmore & Boyd) we have a problem??

Fresh off the Yaffa (cheers Hitch.. ):

(K. Lovell)


AOPA demands Compensation for ADS-B Mandate
28 Aug 2015

AOPA Australia has demanded full compensation for aircraft owners if CASA and Airservices continue with the ADS-B fitment mandate for aircraft in all classes of air space.

In a letter sent to CASA boss Mark Skidmore dated 25 August, AOPA president Mark De Stoop says the organisation will withdraw support because the original Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) has proven to be flawed, and the cost of fitting the equipment is much higher than stated.

"AOPA's position has always been to support new technology that improves safety," De Stoop says. "We believe that ADS-B in areas that previously had no radar coverage has the potential to improve safety in controlled air space.

"We provided this support, however, on the clear understanding from the CASA Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) and the Joint Consultation Paper (JCP) circulated at the beginning of the planned implementation that the financial impact to the GA community would be at very worst cost-neutral.

"We now find ourselves in the situation that the costs of the final developed policy are very substantial to our members."

In the initial RIS, it was estimated that ADS-B would stand to save general aviation $4.1 million in fuel costs every year, but last week Dick Smith presented figure to a Senate inquiry into Airservices Australia that put the cost position to GA at negative $62.2 million.

"We as an organisation took the financial assumptions stated in the RIS to be correct and hence we provided our support for the policy," De stoop said. "If these assumptions are in fact not correct then AOPA will withdraw its support.

"The fact that our members are indeed significantly cost disadvantaged, at the end of the policy formulation, suggests the RIS financial assumptions, or modelling, are indeed incorrect."

De Stoop goes on to call for CASA and Airservices Australia to adopt the US ADS-B policy where the Federal Aviation Administration will not mandate ADS-B for flights in Class E and G airspace below 10,000 feet.

"If CASA/ASA continue to mandate that all GA in the IFR category be fitted in all air space, that AOPA's position is, it will insist on behalf of its members, full financial compensation for costs incurred to aircraft owners as per the original Joint Consultation Paper and Regulatory Impact Statement."

CASA has mandated that all aircraft flying under Instrument Flight Rules be fitted with ADS-B Out equipment by February 2017.

Dick on the ADSB RIS etc.:

Senator XENOPHON: The regulation impact statement that you refer to—was that done in about 2008 or 2009? What year was it?

Mr Smith : I understand it was done in 2009. If I could just explain automatic dependent surveillance broadcast to you, it is a great idea. It is a little black box which sits in the aeroplane and transmits the GPS position. We all know of GPS in someone's motor vehicle. It transmits their position back to air traffic control. In Australia we have two major centres—Brisbane and Melbourne. So the position of your aircraft will appear there.
That, you would think, adds to safety. In fact, Sir Angus Houston in an article in The Australian a couple of weeks ago, where he was rebutting my criticism, said, in effect, 'Dick Smith is wrong. We don't need to do airspace change because we've leapfrogged into automatic dependent surveillance broadcast and Australia is leading the world.'
Unfortunately, what was not mentioned is that most of our aircraft in country areas fly in non-controlled airspace. We are very unusual. I did send this document to every senator. It is a document from when I was involved, believe it or not, way back on 12 December 1991, with the AMATS airspace changes. It says 'stage 4 IFR to IFR separation provided in low-level airspace'. That means instrument flight rule planes, which are ones in cloud, are going to be separated, which means they are going to be controlled by air traffic control, in low-level airspace. You might think, 'That's very strange—aren't they now?' But no. In Australia we had a system where air traffic control basically controlled the high-level airspace and the major airports.
Senator XENOPHON: What is 'high level'? Is that 10,000 feet and above?

Mr Smith : Above about 24,500 feet en route and stepping down to the major airports—Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane. Then there was a separate union, the flight service officers, that gave radio information to pilots, and pilots became their own air traffic controllers.

I was the chairman in 1991, when the board decided that the first step in moving to a more modern airspace system was to increase controlled airspace. So aeroplanes at busy country airports would indeed be controlled from the centre in Melbourne or Brisbane.

Unfortunately, that never happened. We have never actually done the upgrade of the airspace, and there is a good reason for this. First of all, most airline pilots, having learnt on the uncontrolled do-it-yourself system, like that system. It has so far not resulted in a midair collision. We have had some very near problems with it and we did have an accident at Benalla that could possibly have been solved by controlled airspace. But pilots are normally picked psychologically to follow rules. The best pilots are the ones that follow the training they have had. That is what we want. If you do decide to change the rules, people naturally resist, unless there is some really good leadership and communication. That unfortunately failed, and so as of today—and you can work it out: from 1993 to now is 22 years—we still have no low-level, class E controlled airspace, as it is called.

By the way, we managed to get the controlled airspace down to 8,500 feet from 24,500 feet, so that was a start. But where the collision risk is greatest is close to the airport and where there is a chance of running into a mountain, which air traffic control can prevent, because if you are on a radar screen there can be an alarm system which rings an alarm for the controller if you are off track. But in Australia at places like Ballina, and every non-tower airport in Australia—and there would have to be 50 or 60 that take airline traffic—they are in completely uncontrolled airspace. That means when the pilots are in cloud, they call each other and hopefully self-separate.

Just yesterday, there was a terrible accident Irian Jaya. Fifty passengers were killed in that plane crash. It won't have been flown by Stone Age people; they will be competent, internationally AKR rated pilots. The plane would have been equipped with an enhanced ground proximity warning system. But the most likely cause of the accident because it is the most common accident by professional pilots around the world is that it will be a controlled flight into terrain. We will find that that is non-controlled airspace in Irian Jaya and someone has possibly made an error which is not hard to do and descended off the track below the minimum safe altitude.

Just to give you an example of how ridiculous our system is, Airservices have put an ADSB transmitter in at Horn Island, not very far from where this accident site was. Below 18,000 feet at Horn Island there is no controlled airspace. So the pilots change onto the aerodrome frequency and talk to each other in the way they would have in the 1930s to separate. That is an ideal airport to put controlled airspace as we now have automatic dependent surveillance broadcast and all the airline traffic coming in from 18,000 feet and above has had equipment fitted now for over a year.

What I am commenting about with this regulatory impact statement is that the document was done six or seven years ago. It was originally based on the fact that they were going to subsidise general aviation aircraft. They were going to pay for the equipment to go in the general aviation fleet of about 8,000 aircraft. That would be the only way you could justify it because fitting ADSB equipment has some savings to the airlines when it comes to direct tracking in controlled airspace that would give them probably some millions of dollars per year savings, but general aviation really can get no measurable saving out of it.

Senator XENOPHON: Sorry, but that is inconsistent with what the regulatory impact statement said. It said there were savings across the board.

Mr Smith : Yes. The regulatory impact statement is severely flawed. It is a completely dishonest document.

Senator WILLIAMS: Who put that statement out?

Mr Smith : The statement was put out by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. It is quite amazing, because what happens in the bureaucracy is that if someone makes an error, and it is quite simply that there has been a serious made, then everyone closes ranks and says, 'No, don't even discuss it.' I have even had a special meeting with the minister, Warren Truss, over a year ago about this and he finally came back to me and said, 'It was done in 2009, so it can't relooked at.' I am sure he would have been told by the bureaucracy, 'Minister, we can't relook at that,' and he would have been given all these reasons. I even asked Jeff Boyd, who is now the chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and I said: 'You've got to get the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to relook at this. There are serious errors in it. It needs to be done accurately.' The CASA expect pilots to be honest and I said that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has to be honest. But, so far, Jeff Boyd, has not been able to get this relooked at.

The problem is in about 18 months time, a requirement will come in that every single aeroplane in Australia that flies in cloud—and that is every little plane that flies at Bourke or Broken Hill, or Bathurst,, at the flying school—will have to spend anything between $10,000 and $20,000 on fitting this equipment, but they will get no measurable advantage at all because they are in uncontrolled airspace. Even though if there happens to be an ADSB transmitter close by—and to save money Airservices have put in hardly any—the number they have put in gives coverage above about 29,000 feet. But America is putting them right across the country to give coverage down to 2,000 feet. Airservices have not done that because that is the way maximising profits but saying, 'We're the first with ADSB,' when, in effect, at low level where you need it to prevent planes running into mountains, we do not have any coverage.

But let's say I happen to know there is coverage with ADSB at Birdsville; there is a transmitter there. The positions of the small planes will appear very accurately on the air traffic control screen in Brisbane, but because the pilots are in uncontrolled airspace the controller will call the pilot and say—as they did in the 1930s—'Traffic is; aircraft and Metroliner doing an approach', and the pilot then will have to change off the air traffic control frequency, become the air traffic controller, call up the plane and self-separate. Let me explain. If it was the American system—or in fact the system in just about every other country I have flow in, and I am fortunate enough to have done five flights around the world and studied airspace everywhere—then the plane in cloud would be under air traffic control and would not necessarily be told about the other plane but would just be told, 'Commence the approach' or 'Hold at 5,000 feet' or 'Turn left' or 'Turn right' and would in effect be vectored to the approach or told to do the instrument approach which is in the flight plan. A plane departing might be told to hold on the ground for two or three minutes until the plane coming in is visual.

The problem, and the reason I have linked this regulatory impact statement with OneSKY, is that they are purchasing the OneSKY system for the old airspace system. We have not gone to the airspace system that was government policy under the Hawke government and Kim Beazley as minister in 1991 and then 1993 because of a number of claims. One is that it will require a huge number of extra traffic controllers. You have already heard that the cost is nearly $1 billion a year for our air traffic control now. But the interesting thing is that when you fly in Australia—and I fly all the time; I flew my aircraft down today—a lot of the time you fly—

Senator Xenophon interjecting—

Mr Smith : I happened to fly a helicopter today, but it can be—

CHAIR: We will not say which one it was like!

 
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