[Peetwo]

Wow, wudja look at all 'em tall buildings Martha!

Or; more colloquially; “have seen what they're doing at Kickinatinalong”? It is a common enough question in aviation circles; and usually ends up with those discussing 'developments' shaking their heads and left wondering 'how' this rape of an innocent aerodrome could occur.

Wonder no more; well, less anyway. - HERE - is a link to Sub.48 made to the latest Senate Inquiry. It is a solid read, but worth the time, easiest to read it in 'small doses' for there are some genuine pearls of wisdom contained within. 

Sub. 48: - P8 :- ”The Making Ends Meet Report makes it very clear that there are limits to the operation of the market place, a lesson which we have been ignoring at our own peril and the lives of those involved in aviation. Of course, this is an issue which may be impossible to resolve because of the entrenched position that some self-interested players will hold but there is a need to transcend that and ask are the decisions which are being made in the ‘public interest’,and where is the evidence to support a particular claim beyond the standard, generic rhetoric which is invariably not tuned to the specific issue(s) at hand?

Sub. 48: - P9 :- ”An anorexic dowry accompanied the handover of airfields to councils under the ALOP arrangement but future maintenance funding was cut off by the federal government and local government was left to make do as best it could once the once-off dowry ran out. The flawed, unsubstantiated view that local government ‘knew best’ what to do with aviation infrastructure prevailed,aided and abetted by the zeitgeist of the time that the free market along with local government would be best placed to determine the future of our aviation infrastructure notwithstanding, in many cases, a complete lack of understanding of aviation and its’ needs by local government.

Will the submission make any difference? Who knows, at the rate this current inquiry is moving, the buildings will up and running long before any 'positive' action is taken to ensure essential 'safety' margins are met and that vital infrastructure does not become another shopping centre. The fatal accident at the Essendon DFO should have been ringing bloody big alarum bells along the corridors of power – Is it just me gone deaf?

Toot – toot.

AIPA addendum: Extract from - https://www.aipa.org.au/media/1847/20-11...020-dp.pdf

AIRPORT SAFEGUARDING


Nearly three years later, AIPA, through AusALPA, made a submission to DITRDC as part of the 2019 NASF Implementation Review. Unsurprisingly, the main themes were in regard to jurisdictional fragmentation, transparency and Commonwealth leadership. While we are committed to the NASF, we are also keenly aware of the impediments to fully implementing a consistent national scheme for at least RPT airports. We concluded as follows:

A Way Forward

To be clear, AusALPA recognises that the economic decisions surrounding airports, i.e. determining the balance between the economic benefits of developments and the detriments to the accessibility, efficiency and capacity of an airport, rest entirely with the relevant jurisdiction within which the airport is situated or which retains legal control. The issues of enforceability and dispute resolution of development approvals would remain consistent with those jurisdictional norms.


However, contrary to current practice, we are proposing that the assessment, mitigation and enforcement of the safety consequences of all relevant developments be ceded by those jurisdictions to CASA as an independent decision-maker.

Consequently, CASA needs to change its model of how airport standards are applied and enforced so as to obviate the gaming of the system so exemplified by the Essendon experience or by the uncontrolled expansion of the thousands of airspace penetrations at Sydney. As a further consequence, DITCRD should seek major amendments to the Airports Act 1996 that change the current subservient and excessively constrained role attributed to CASA and that also clarify the safety considerations that ABCs must undertake in regard to minor developments.

Furthermore, we are proposing that the visibility of developments affecting the safety outcomes at airports is vastly improved in all jurisdictions.

The public interest is best served by accepting that the potential hazard created by a development on or near an airport is not a function of cost but rather the amalgam of the issues set out in the Guidelines. Each jurisdiction should commit to a public register of development proposals that may present a potential hazard to safe airport operations, enhanced by a published list of stakeholders who are alerted to each new relevant development submitted to the jurisdiction for approval.

AIPA, through AusALPA, will continue our commitment to airport safeguarding and look forward to participating in NASAG discussion post-pandemic.

How can airspace protection balance the needs of the aviation industry with those of land owners and surrounding communities?

AIPA suggests that this question should have been comprehensively answered in 1996. The lay reader of the relevant text (quoted below) from the Explanatory Memorandum for Part 12 for the Airports Bill 1996 could be forgiven for believing that the proponent of a controlled activity bore the onus to prove that any effect on the “safety, efficiency and regularity of air transport operations into or out of an airport” was acceptable, contemplating a range of future aviation activities:

This Part enables the Commonwealth to make regulations to prevent certain incursions into airspace where it is in the interests of the safety, efficiency and regularity of air transport operations into or out of an airport to do so.

The provisions can be applied to airports where the site is a Commonwealth place, as well as to airports specified in the regulations, where the site is not a Commonwealth place. As an example, the Part will enable the Commonwealth to control the construction of buildings or other structures, the height of which would adversely affect the ability of an airport to which the Part applies to cater for existing or future air transport operations. The restrictions can be applied to on-airport or off-airport areas, such as along or adjacent to current or future flight paths, where the height of the proposed building or structure would interfere with prescribed airspace.

Similarly, the relevant text from the Explanatory Statement for the Airports (Protection of Airspace) Regulations 1996 (APARs) might give similar comfort:

The approval authority for proposed controlled activities is the Secretary of the Department of Transport and Regional Development. If a proposed activity would result in an incursion into the PANS-OPS surface or if the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) advises the Secretary that in the interests of the safety of air transport the application should not be approved. then the application to conduct that activity cannot be approved. In other cases, the Secretary must assess the application having regard to the views of the proponent, the airport-lessee company, CASA, Airservices Australia, relevant building authorities and, in the case of a joint-user airport, the Department of Defence.

Unfortunately, the practical application of the APARs by DITRDC and its predecessor Departments, observed by AIPA over the last 10 years at least, appears to have become legislation that protects developers above all else. CASA advice to the Secretary only gains significance if the magic threshold of “an unacceptable effect on the safety of existing or future air transport operations”, whatever that actually means in practice. Our experience with assessing the several applications for controlled activities that have come to our attention is that the proponent/developer never addresses the safety or other consequences of the activity. It seems highly likely that the status quo established by DITRDC and CASA is that there is no such requirement and that the onus to prove detriment is reversed and placed upon those conducting the air transport operations.

On 15 June 2018, AIPA wrote to Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd in regard to the proposed Hayes Dock development at Port Botany that involved an OLS penetration of nearly 30 metres. In that letter, we canvassed many of the above issues. On 09 August 2019, we significantly expanded upon those same issues in a letter from AusALPA to Adelaide Airport Ltd in regard to a proposed development at 207 Pulteney Street Adelaide, which included a copy of an AusALPA Position Paper8 related to OLS penetrations. We presume both of those letters were forwarded to DITRDC in accordance with the APARs procedures related to controlled activities.

AIPA considers that the Position Paper specifically addresses the question.

AIRPORTS ACT 1996 DEFINITION OF CONTROLLED ACTIVITIES

The recent DITRDC approval for cranes to permanently penetrate the Obstacle Limitation Surface (OLS) by 21 metres, the effects of which by definition must be acceptable, has also revealed a definitional issue in relation to regulation 182(1)©. That paragraph refers to a “thing attached to, or in physical contact with, the ground” which precludes the consideration of ships underway. We presume that a ship at anchor or moored to a wharf falls within ambit because they are attached directly or indirectly to the ground.

DITRDC have indicated that they do not intend to take urgent action to resolve the issue, despite the ships underway or anchored at Hayes Dock that can be serviced by the new cranes will both penetrate the OLS and create a potential windshear and turbulence hazard to operations at KSA. Hand-balling the problem back to CASA is also unhelpful – while they are apparently indifferent to the OLS penetration, their risk management response to the latter hazard is to restrict operations at the airport for the duration of any hazard that eventuates.

AIPA considers these outcomes to be inconsistent with the stated objectives of the Act and APARs and unacceptable on safety grounds. WE urge DITRDC to commence amendment action to correct this and related deficiencies in the definitions.

MTF...P2