Pominaus

I don't know the rates at this school, but around me the schools are defo making quite a bit more on lessons than they are from hiring, especially when it comes to taking the plane, laying over and returning. so the hiring side of things is just additional revenue options for when all the planes are on the ground. I actually got quite confused by the full story... so he built up 100 hours at school A, endorsements and what not, then went to school B and they said no? To be honest it is the height of the 'back to the sky' season - lots of schools around here are chockers right now, they might genuinely have enough students to fill the plane with dual time, or maybe as they say they prioritise their own ex students hiring over randoms.. makes sense to me.. However on the question should it be a requirement of RAA membership... no way! Someone, the school, another company, an indevidual owns that plane with their own money, and should (laws permitting) be able to do with it as they please. Now standard discrimination laws apply - if they won't let you hire it because you're from Melbourne and they're from Sydney you might have a case, but no I don't think that's a good idea. Ultimately the person offering the hire should be able to say no to an airline pilot if they just saw them hoon into the car park and aren't feeling good about the way they might treat the plane. Honestly if you put in the rules that anyone offering a plane for hire has to accept anybody with the right ticket if the plane is available, you'd just see a lot of for hire planes get pulled pretty quick and we'd all lose.

Just about the only thing I miss about tiny British gardens - all your neighbours having an electric lawnmower lol! Glad to hear I'm not the only one baffled by leaf blowers though!

I agree ballpark $30 is very reasonable - I pay about 4-5x that to go to other industry conventions where an awful lot more booths are paying to sell me stuff lol.

RIP Defender!

Yep, a lot of them where we live. Now spring's here, the schools out of Moorabbin are pretty busy, so fairly regular planes over head through the day, and a few night training flights in the evening. A neighbour caught me watching one the other day - cloud was low, so the plane was low enough to identify- and that triggered him on a 20 minute rant about rich guys flying noisy planes over his house (by which he means mostly about a mile away and just loud enough that you can just about hear them outside your house, unlike his 9am on a Sunday morning lawnmower/leaf blower/chainsaw). Having that yellow streak that helps keep pilots alive, I've kept my involvement in aviation a secret from him, though have flown over my... so I guess his house before.... oh the temptation to go full throttle!

Lol outrage. Personally I just fun looking into it, & op corrected them on the length from the start.

... yep! I didn't want to go to the sun, but they listed it as 22'2" long, so news.com.au just copied that and converted it to meters rather than pop on over to Wikipedia lol. Not sure where the Sun copied it from, but they got all their photos and bulk of it from Reuters... though the Reuters article doesn't list length. Maybe the sun just googled the wrong plane? Though tats a foot shorter than a pA28 Lol. I like to think they put in G7000 to google, google said did you mean G1000, aand just went with the first plane that came up

Knowing modern journalism it was probable copied whole sale from someone else's mistake lol. It's kind of like the old pirate radio stations that used to have their news and weather 10 minutes after the official stations

Congrats and good luck on the CPL! What's the plan for your commercial? I know some people do it for the next rating, but if you are looking for work, probably best to look at the hours going forward as resume building. I hear some employers might not count any time on jabiru's/foxbats as they don't use them - say meat bomber command or air taxi, but then as more and more schools start to use LSA's to lower costs, some schools looking for instructors might rate your jab time more highly than the 152 they retired.... Probs best to ask some advice in a chosen field if you have a plan imho.

Yep it's down Just checked downforeveryoneorjustme from my phone: It says they're hosted by rackspace, so I really wouldn't have expected any hosting problems, unless it's reseller hosting?

That's fair enough! Yeah for me it would be a no brainer as around here it's 50-100 bucks difference, so I wouldn't have to do many RA flights a year to be saving money, but if the margins are that small, and no options near by ... I'd probably let it lapse and reactivate when you do want it tbh - their membership fee is one of those numbers that's small when your flying, pretty huge when you're not. If you can that is; their website seems to be down for me right now lol.

I heard another podcast with one of the owners of TVSA not too long ago I think, and the Bristell sounded like they were pretty much brand new at the time, maybe they're building in the pay-off cost? I notice their website price sheet hasn't been updated to include the Bristell, though a C152 is only $199, and they burn what, about 10L more an hour? Or maybe the Bristell's are just more in demand with lessons? $140 is still a doable price in the east melbourne area - it's just availability unfortunately. I know lilydale for example charge about $140 solo for their Jab, and I think Coldstream have a technam, but if you take it cross country, the school's only making money on the time you've got it in the air. Whilst you're camping/fishing at the other end their plane is sitting around doing nothing, so if they have enough demand, it just makes more sense to them to keep the plane on base racking up dual hours. Are you able to hire midweek? It might be easier, schools quite often have a much larger ground squadron on a tuesday? Might be worth looking into joining a club at your nearest to build up some connections? I'd image a school would be more willing to hire to a known person than a rando?

Can't even imagine trying to land a two story plane with a fin that big in a crosswind! I'm defo qualified to pass judgement on the flight crew, but man I just enjoy watching those massive wings flex. Every time I fly back to the UK the long leg is on a 380, and I'm always amazed just how much those wings rise up as you pound down the tarmac!

I broadly agree, but I think this was loss driven. They lost over £200m in 2016, £100m this year and were projecting over £100m losses again next year. Granted they employed about 2000 people, but those numbers aren't sustainable. They briefly made a slight profit in 2015 after years of losses due to fuel price mostly, but really it's not reasonable to expect the state to fund every failing business. Fortunately for the workers, there does seem to be some demand for them from other airlines. It's a sad thing, but what can you do? If a company is loosing a hundred mil every year whilst their competitors make hundreds of millions per year... you have to say that really either the company is being run appallingly, or, more likely, passengers prefer to fly with someone else.

Nice one, best of luck! Did you decide to go with Lilydale in the end?

Thanks for the info! My wife works for council, so I can't say I'm at all surprised about the environmental requirement. Maybe we'll just have to fly these: New electric aircraft promises ‘disruptive affordability’

Welcome! I've just gone through a similar process. I'm not entirely new to flying, but all my experience is in the UK, and I stupidly never finished up and got my PPL before I left. I too looked into SOAR and a few others. One big thing I learnt from visiting the schools around Melbourne is don't go by the websites lol. Flight instructors may often have a background in IT, but few schools are big enough to have a full time website guy lol. If you can get out of the city, it's worth it. Cheaper lessons as you don't have moorabbin's landing fees, and at Bacchus marsh(school's called TVSA)/lilydale/coldstream etc you'll be engine on to airborne in the shortest time; no paying to wait your turn/taxi. Lilydale and Coldstream use PA28's I think, and Bacchus Marsh use C152/172's from what I recall. I did an intro flight at SOAR, and they were good, but a few warning signals went off in my head. I don't want to speak badly of anyone after so little experience but at moorabbin there's a LOT of choice - you really can just drive down there and pop into every school and have a chat on a day off. I've had quite a few people recommend Peter Bini, RVAC and Oasis at Moorabbin, though I'm sure others have more experience. Best of luck with uni and flying!

^ wow I went from agnostic to oppinionated just reading the answers lol! Thanks again though all, I definitely have a deeper understanding of the issues behind all this now :)

Oh wow, thanks all; I was half expecting to be told to go re-read the old threads again lol - really, thanks for taking the time to explore more of the depth of the issue! It's definitely helped, especially understanding the difference in motivation between 750kg and 1500kg. Personal oppionion: to be honest I come to this not having grown up with anything like the RAA, so I personally still see just being able to fly something like a jab or a sac or a fox or whatever without a medical and all the civili regulator restrictions quite a privilege. I'm not sure about the 1500kg mtow though; that feels like you're essentially asking casa to remove medicals for GA. I can understand the motivation there - if we are lucky to live long enough, every one of us will one day fail a medical sadly. But I don't know how much I want a medical-free GA scene above my house. It's one thing to say that ASICs are utterly pointless, I don't think I'd agree that medicals are to be honest. But hey that's just my opinion, and let's be honest I haven't yet got to the point where I'm directly affected. The 750/760 increase. Actually rather than get into an MTOW creep scenario where every 5 years people ask for another 50kg to get this plane or that plane added in, why not work backwards from some real world example - one pilot, one passenger both chubbo's at 100kg, 30kg of tent, lunch and snacks and 100kg for fuel (totally abitrary of course.. please base the numbers on something that didn't just pop into my head). I mean if you ask people 'would you like an extra 100kg allowance on your current plane?' When are they gonna say no? Then manufacturers will build to the new weight and it will start again. Maybe increase the MTOW, but set the empty weight at ... 400kg or whatever? I know, it won't appease the people who just want heavier planes, but it would give more versitility to recreational plane use I think? Honeslty I don't have an opinion on controlled airspace... I'm just too conflicted; it comes back to that 1500kg's thing - I'm under one of the common flight paths from moorabbin, and I really don't want all the GA planes above me operating medical free. Sorry to the people that affects, I'm sure you're stand up pilots, but yeah. Then again if we had a controlled airspace endo, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. Hypocrisy? Probably! Like I say, I'm torn on that one. Finally there's actually another reason I don't want the MTOW alone to increase too high. The restriction is actually driving some great aircraft decelopement, and it does make recreational flying cheaper - more weight, more cost after all. I also don't see the sense going forward of basing our future weight allowances on 30+ year old planes, when the future of plane technology will always be towards the lighter weight. C172's may be the world's most popular plane but they're ancient tech. To me it's like planning car regulations on the (original) VW beetle.

I'm pretty new to the debate and keep reading the threads, but hit a wall when trying to work out exactly why this is so in demand? Is it just so people can keep flying their Cessna, Piper, Beech, etc on RAAus certs if they don't pass a casa medical? Sorry I know it's been done to death, and I keep reading the same arguments in the different threads, but never seem to hit on exactly why it's so important to people to have it, just allusions to the medical. Sorry if it stirs the pot - genuine question!

I don't need a weight increase... but IFR endorsement you say ...

Just trying to work out just how many oh **** moments there were in that one gives me a headache lol!

It's definitely an interesting topic, and I really don't agree with the 'or you shouldn't be flying' assertion. I don't know, I haven't done it in nearly 20 years so I can't trust my memory, but I expect to be doing it again soon enough! I don't know, there's certainly a risk involved with spin training of course, but I still lean towards a necessary evil I think. That said in this day and age I think it's reasonable for 90% of your spin training to be in a simulator. I know we're not there yet in Australia with sin training compared to the US, but it's defo the future even for RA-Aus I expect. Sure spins happen most often at low altitudes for obvious reasons, but without I expect the number of recoverable spin accidents to increase.

I really don't think that's what's happening - they were looking to sell/merge/be saved prior to realising that they were essentially out of options. And yes, just like before, the lower dollar helps Qantas, but so did the three year turnaround plan they formulated to cut costs and become more efficient, as well as the sharp rise in domestic passengers. It all comes back to my last point - yes currency values affect companies, and they will certainly make a stink about it hoping to get a government to act as it's out of their control, but if your company isn't on the rocks you should be able to navigate small fluctuations like the current value of the pound. I'm not sure why this is so important to you to be solely because of the pound value post brexit. As a reference, the board members that made the decision have been quite public about their reasons, stating that's just a part of the problem & industry analysts have said it's just a factor. We can even google and see in trouble before brexit, nearly going bust in 2014 and only really making money in 2015 as all the airlines profited from cheap fuel savings they forgot to pass on to passengers ticket prices lol. At the end of the day there were several factors against monarch. Is your headline wrong? nope, but let's not pretend this glorious technicolor ****up is black and white. I still just feel most sorry for affected staff and passengers. One thing I thought was bad was that apparently due to British regs they couldn't operate to bring people home or warn them. So they had to announce the collapse at 4am, with many passengers loosing even more money travelling to the airports unnecessarily. Fortunately for staff, Monarch were not a budget airline, so their probably superiorly trained staff are appealing to some other airlines. I believe EasyJet have said they're looking to (save training costs and) hire a few hundred customer service staff (ground and air). But of course that passes on down. Lots of highly experienced airline staff come on the market, people looking to get into the industry in the UK get locked out. Let's just hope Ryan Air make it through their troubles (can't believe I just said that).

Oh of course, just like all businesses look to reduce costs. However let's not forget why Qantas had to ask to be allowed to move when any other business could just move - not only are they subsidised by tax payers, but they also wanted to be debt-guarenteed by them too. People get annoyed if you use tax payers money to move over seas and keep your hand in the cookie jar lol. Don't get me wrong, I support subsidising Qantas - we're a nation dependant on air travel and I think on the whole tax payers benefit from the cost personally. But yeah, move over seas taking Aussie jobs? That's a bit rich. Look, nobody is saying that the value of the pound had no effect, of course it did, but that same problem has affected all other UK based businesses. Even the ex-boss of Monarch seems to be saying it wasn't just one factor. The main factor in recent years according to monarch, being the cancellation of routes they didn't have much competition on due to terrorism, forcing them to depend on the highly competitive Spain-area routes, and the company was already in poor shape to face that fight. Honestly if the pound was where it was 2 years ago, you'd have to say looking at these losses they would have still been in dire trouble. Currency will always vary. The real risk from brexit for airlines over there is if anything messes with their ability to operate as if the EU destinations are essentially domestic ones like they do now.