What is the future for small airstrips and airports? How will the COVID induced recession affect local councils financial ability to continue funding airports?
There’s not too many aviators left with Ron Dickenson’s kind of logbook. He’s 91, and has been a pilot since 1944.
Now, it seems his flying career could mark the rise and fall of general aviation in Australia.
Across the country, tiny airstrips are at risk. Sixty-one per cent of small aerodromes ran at a loss in 2014-15. Fast forward to 2020 – COVID-19 and the following recession and the future looks grim for smaller airstrips.
With expenditure expected to rise by 48 per cent in the next decade, the numbers don’t look good. But there was a golden age of Australian aviation and Mr Dickenson was part of it.
The Golden Age of Aviation
When he received his first pilot licence, it simply read: “Licence to fly flying machines.”
“We did anything. There must have been regulations for the airlines, but they didn’t seem to apply to private planes,” Mr Dickenson said.
“I used to do aerobatics over our home in Kew [in Melbourne]. Mum would come out and she’d wave a towel or a sheet, then I’d fly back again.”
But security and safety considerations have put an end to these fun-filled days of aviation. The sky is no longer what it was.
In 1944, Mr Dickenson began his training in the air force. At that time the military was where the development of most new planes and aviation technologies took place.
Today that’s not necessarily the case — with hybrid and electric planes being developed by the private sector.
Some are already on the market, but these short-range planes need an aviation ecosystem in which to operate. This means small airfields to land at.
Local Councils Now Control Many Small Airstrips
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Government handed over the control of hundreds of tiny airports to city councils. This scheme known as ALOP, the Aerodrome Local Ownership Plan.
ALOP came with the caveat that the councils were not permitted to sell, lease or dispose of the aerodromes without the written consent of the secretary of the Department of Transport.
To some councils, this gift looked more like a burden, because it’s the council that now needs to find the funding for runway overhauls, landing lights and fencing.
The airfield at Kempsey on the mid north coast of NSW is a striking example.
In a recent judgment involving a collision between a kangaroo and a landing aeroplane at the airport, the judge found in favour of the plane owner.
The Kempsey Shire Council was liable for the cost of a new propeller worth almost $200,000.
The judge said the council knew about the kangaroo problem and should have put up a fence, which would have cost $100,000.
The council argued the money could have been better spent elsewhere and is appealing the decision.
The Battleground: Development vs. Aviation
The Australian Airports Association suggests as many as 50 per cent of Australia’s regional airports may be operating at a loss each year.
Many local councils can see more revenue in selling the land to real estate developers.
On Melbourne’s outskirts, airports like Geelong, Philip Island, Pakenham, Berwick, Wallan, Welshpool, Melton, Moorooduc and Labertouche have all gone this way.
The situation is not much better in NSW or Queensland.
In remote Australia, where cars are simply not an option, the problem of airport closures is not so bad.
Under the terms of ALOP, councils were legally required to keep airports as airports, but some have been mothballed prior to sale, forestalling any challenges.
This is how the situation in Kempsey could be heading, as well as in Gympie, Queensland, and in the Victorian towns of Mildura and Yarram.
What does the community and aviation stand to lose?
Aviators like Mr Dickenson are having to explain to the wider community how small airport closures affect them.
The benefits of tiny airports are harder to define than those of their large counterparts because they don’t measure passenger movements or represent regular flying schedules.
Small airstrips are needed for postal services, water bombing activity, air ambulances, the SES, police, tourism, crop dusting, survey planes, flight training schools and simple connectivity.
General aviation has long been a home of ideas, where knowledge, experience and innovation have helped drive the future of flying forward.
In Europe, tiny airports are being used to develop new environmentally and economically efficient aviation technologies.
But that culture is absent on Australia’s increasingly deserted small runways.
Article courtesy of the ABC.
