Bankstown Airport - Is it all Doom and Gloom?

[Reynard]

Private operations, as defined by CASA. What is the private aircraft ownership trend ? Up, down, static ? I don’t know. But from the turn of the century in Australia I would be surprised if it paralleled with pop’n growth.

The next question(s) would be how many of the GA PPL/RPL holders actually have a medical that is current and how many of the 11,970 SE aircraft on the register have a current maintenance release. I understand those numbers may be hard to find, but would be a true measure of current private GA activity.

[turboplanner]

15 minutes ago, Reynard said:

Private operations, as defined by CASA. What is the private aircraft ownership trend ? Up, down, static ? I don’t know. But from the turn of the century in Australia I would be surprised if it paralleled with pop’n growth.

The next question(s) would be how many of the GA PPL/RPL holders actually have a medical that is current and how many of the 11,970 SE aircraft on the register have a current maintenance release. I understand those numbers may be hard to find, but would be a true measure of current private GA activity.

We're in a free enterprise society so the fine details don't matter so much.

The available statistics show enough movements for the available study group to be viable, and with a consistent customer base including Bankstown which was what this thread was about.

 

From there it shows that in the smaller cities and towns around Australia flying viability will vary based on the local income activity.

 

Like any business, when the customer base moves you have to move with it; in fact if you want to make good money the smart way is to move first. Mr A.T Berry did with his Falcon Ute terminal at Roma and around 36 years later the Mayor was dedicating the new A.T. Berry Terminal to him.

 

The stories we should be telling are the wins, like being able to compress your RPL/PPL with live-in on the field accommodation at Moorabbin, and the investment going in sealing runways around Australia.

 

Better still as you pointed out we should be promoting Rereational Aviation rather than getting embroiled in the politics of GA.

[walrus]

Turbo, yes, that is the way it is supposed to work in a free market capitalist economy that we are supposed to have. We should always be looking at the donut, not the hole.

 

However, although I have no direct experience of CASA and certainly haven't seen any bad behaviour personally,

 

I don't wish to be dragged into the discussions of alleged bastardry that appear to be continuous.

 

What I think I can say, taking an overall view of the situation is that over the years I have read enough, including Parliamentary publications, that document Government attitudes and associated CASA regulatory behaviour that increases business risk for potential investors in aviation compared to other forms of investment, for example, property development, mining, agriculture and even manufacturing.

 

When you evaluate an investment opportunity, you start with consideration of Sovereign risk, that is the risk of doing business ina p-articular country and then drill down to business risks, competitors likely reactions, technical risk, etc. etc until you arrive at a return on investment adjusted for the risks involved. IF the risk is high, then the returns must be high.

 

A component of sovereign risk is regulatory risk and aviation is a regulatory minefield as is allegedly CASA's behaviour in promulgating, interpreting and enforcing the same, at least according to Sen. Fawcett and many other MP's. The risk of investing in aviation in Austrlia is too high compared to other investment opportunities

 

That means that we are likely to be underinvested  in the aviation sector of our economy compared to say, USA, New Zealand and even UK. NO investment = no economic activity = no jobs and it's a vicious circle.

 

[turboplanner]

6 hours ago, walrus said:

Turbo, yes, that is the way it is supposed to work in a free market capitalist economy that we are supposed to have. We should always be looking at the donut, not the hole.

Yes, when marketing we are looking at the ability of people to eat donuts rather than holes which is why we don't bother lamenting about the holes being smaller these days.

 

6 hours ago, walrus said:

What I think I can say, taking an overall view of the situation is that over the years I have read enough, including Parliamentary publications, that document Government attitudes and associated CASA regulatory behaviour that increases business risk for potential investors in aviation compared to other forms of investment, for example, property development, mining, agriculture and even manufacturing.

There are two differences here:

1. CASA's function is Compliance and Enforcement of aviation; effectively the highway cops of the air.        Most complainants never talk about Airservices.

2. Property development, mining, agriculture and manufacturing do their own Compliance and                    Enforcement. Most have developed their own OHS policies and many have adopted ISO 9000 - 2015

    Both of these safeguards are available to aviation.

6 hours ago, walrus said:

 

When you evaluate an investment opportunity, you start with consideration of Sovereign risk, that is the risk of doing business ina p-articular country and then drill down to business risks, competitors likely reactions, technical risk, etc. etc until you arrive at a return on investment adjusted for the risks involved. IF the risk is high, then the returns must be high.

 

A component of sovereign risk is regulatory risk and aviation is a regulatory minefield as is allegedly CASA's behaviour in promulgating, interpreting and enforcing the same, at least according to Sen. Fawcett and many other MP's. The risk of investing in aviation in Austrlia is too high compared to other investment opportunities

And yet in a relatively short time I was able to find 14 Australian Airports thriving with a total of 1.5 million movements per year, and that's without the Capital City RPT Airports or the bulk of Country aviation across Australia, and on drilling down to one Airport, Moorabbin found consistent activity volume dating back 62 years. The key takeaway from that data is not high risk of investing, but the need to research demand before selecting a location. You would know that when you've picked an Industry to research for investment opportunities, you then look at the possibilities. I touched on some very basic markers for drilling down, one of them being the obvious Very High Performers, way above the town population metric. Start looking at those instead of the run down airfields with 60 yo fleets, and you get acceptable risks.

6 hours ago, walrus said:

That means that we are likely to be underinvested  in the aviation sector of our economy compared to say, USA, New Zealand and even UK. NO investment = no economic activity = no jobs and it's a vicious circle.

I used Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles as the comparison with Moorabbin. It probably has more Executive jets than Moorabbin, but the annual movements were about the same.

 

If you want to compare an enterprise in Australia vs Overseas Countries, Critical Mass is important; for example Australia no longer has the critical mass to manufacture cars; USA does.

The start of this calculation is population which will give you an idea of market viability; for example if you want to sell a product into the US market which is successful in chain stores in Australia which might number 20, you have to finance advertising and stock supply for a campaign in 1,000 US stores if you want to catch the Spring market.

The populaation calculation is like this:

Australia: 26 million

USA: Australia x 13

UK: Australia x 2.6

Canada: Australia x 1.5

NZ: 19% of Australia

 

If there was NO investment in Australia, yes there would be no economic activity, no jobs, but the Airservices data showed steady, viable markets in all our Secondary City Airports (without taking into account the revenue they earn from non-aviation activities) and the Regional/Country Airports they had website data for. Given that some of the most spectacular growth, like Roma weren't on the Airservices list the stories of ruin are fanciful.

 

 

 

[turboplanner]

15 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Another variable is the type of activity.

The Upper and Lower South East of South Australia produces half the Agribusiness income for the State, so we would expect airfields to do better there than in the baren areas of the north.

 

In the South East, in the 1960s the Naracoorte airport consisted of two sheds, this is it today,

Population of Naracoorte is 5,960.

I'm told this long runway and loop is for the Country Fire Service to pick up water and Crop dusters to load dry product.

We've had a few discussions where Aviators trying to save Council Airports from residential or industrial development have given evidence to Planning Tribunals that their airport needs RFDS/Fire fighting capability, but the Tribunals eyes seem to glaze over anyting but Planning terms. Here's a Country Airport that's walked the talk and set it up. I'm assuming the tanks are connected to the town water supply which on that contour would have a lot of pressure.

[turboplanner]

Latest news from Moorabbin Airport