By Rod Douglas 

It’s five am on one of those lovely winter mornings in Queensland. Dark, really dark, and a little cold in the hour before the sun will break the horizon. At the other end of the country a good solid fog is starting to build. Down there they know what cold really means.

Today will be a good day. The Nomad, an Australian aviation icon, is to find an Australian home where it will be loved, honoured and put back into production. Today I will once again do what only a pilot (or the very wealthy) can do. Strap on a superb, technologically advanced aircraft and in a day filled with awe fly from Archerfield to Latrobe Regional in Victoria for the handover ceremony and be back for dinner.

None of the drama or mess around provided by the airlines: just a couple of blokes in a superb piece of equipment enjoying each other’s company, the breaking of dawn and the view as our great big country slips rapidly past.

My company for this flight is David Withers, President of Boeing in Australia. David has the pleasure of being responsible for safely handing back the type certificate into Australian ownership. Boeing had become custodian of the type certificate when they bought the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF) in 1996. What many don’t realise is the length that an aircraft manufacturer needs to go to in maintaining a type certificate. Worse still, should a manufacturer choose to hand back a type certificate it effectively grounds the fleet.

This unravelled a mystery for me. A number of years ago Beechcraft  made an offer to all the owners of their failed Starship experiment to swap their aircraft for a brand new King Air. At the time this seemed to me to be a ridiculously generous offer that would mean the end of what was a clearly failed experiment in composite canard design.  The program had been fraught with problems. Having spent some time talking with David about the costs of maintaining a type certificate it became clear to me that the cost to Beechcraft  to swap them out so the type certificate could be handed back to the FAA  was an intelligent trade off. For the Starship owners, giving up their ugly duckling for a brand new King Air would hardly be seen as a significant hardship.

We finally got into the air a little before six am with a fog probability of 60%. Fog is one of the great levellers of aviation. Doesn’t really matter how big the equipment if it’s foggy you won’t get in. We figured that if we were to wait out fog we may as well do it on the ground somewhere close. Our steed for this flight was a brand new SR22 Turbo. With a track distance of 735 nm and in a southerly direction we’re going to be a little light on fuel on arrival but it really was a perfect fit into the mission profile for the aircraft. It was a beautiful morning as we climbed straight up and though the flight levels to our cruising altitude of FL180.

With the oxygen on and the engine purring we saw a touch over 200 knots with a cross wind that was predicted to swing on to the rear quarter. We’d be on the ground around 9.45 am with plenty of time to spare before the Minister for Trade, Simon Crean, arrived and the formalities started.

As we flew south David updated me on the history of the type certificate. With 170 airframes manufactured and 54 civil aircraft flying around the world plus a number of military examples, the Nomad clearly has proven itself to be an effective and tough load hauler with a reputation for reliability throughout the world.  Developed by the GAF in the 60’s, it is one of a handful of Australian developed types and sits in company with the Victa Airtourer, Seabird Seeker and the Gippsland Aviation AirVan.

Developing a new type certificate, or even updating it, is an enormous investment. It is the size of the investment that has held back the development and integration of new technologies and designs into the GA fleet. While cars seem to have a design cycle of six or seven years with a face lift every couple of years the majority of GA production sits upon type certificates that were first issued 50 years ago. Cessna’s solution to its lack of competition in the world of plastic fantastic fixed gear big engine glass equipped rockets was not to build a new one, but to simply wait until Columbia went broke and rebadged the 400 as a Cessna. For a company that has regularly produced a new clear sheet jet every five years for the last couple of decades, this gives an indication of just how challenging the task actually is.

Once we reached cruise and with few hours to think about it before the ceremony I started to contemplate some of the other unique aspects of aviation that I’ve been thinking about of late.

Where in the World is Virgin Blue Going?

When I’m not flying myself around I partake of the smiling boys and girls of Virgin Blue.  I’ve always been a supporter of underdogs and even though I was a golden Ansett frequent flyer, (and yes losing those 1.5 million points hurt), when Virgin Blue started flying I began supporting them. At the start it was great fun. They had culture that was truly ubiquitous.

Seven years later I can only wonder where they are going. One class, cheap as chip fares have become one class with a completely empty front three rows painted red. Happy, healthy, slim and smiley crews have become bored, boring and aisle filling. Utilitarian one in all in has become class conscious gold frequent flyers with a lounge all to themselves. And yes, I proudly flash my very gold card and love my new Velocity point balance even if their anytime points fares mean that anytime you might want to use them with the family the points cost is so high they just keep on building.

Meanwhile, with no major shareholder, skyrocketing oil prices and truly beautiful profits reduced to spiral earnings provisions, the tightly focused and effective management team thought they might as well build an international airline competing on the super competitive pacific route. The last time I remember that happening was some mob called, now let me see, Ansett, I think.

Funny parallels there. Built by a team passionate aviators, Ansett was bought by an acquisitive logistic entrepreneur who then sold half to an acquisitive newspaper entrepreneur who then fleeced an airline when they sold it, who then stripped it bare, before hanging it out to dry. The worst of all this was, that for my money, Ansett provided the best customer experience package of the lot.

The whole Virgin circus is delightfully demonstrated by those rows and rows of empty red seats. I would average a couple of sectors a week and often more on East Coast high capacity routes. In the months since these seats have been for sale I have seen a total of six premium paying passengers. How do I know? I asked. Every time I saw anyone in one of the seats.

Those seats are the most strategically dumb piece of culture misalignment I’ve ever seen. Why Virgin Blue’s management, those bastions of equality, could ever imagine that they could sell premium seats for a few dollars short of the cost of a Qantas full economy seat is beyond me. In fact, it demonstrates that the decisions makers at Virgin don’t have much idea who the high yielding passengers are that fly with them and, like all airlines, deliver their best profits.

Here’s the rub. If I wanted to sit in a wide seat and get well fed, then I buy a Qantas ticket and upgrade it with all the thousands of points that are still washing around in my Qantas frequent flyer account. That’s what I did at Ansett. Can I do that at Virgin? Don’t be silly.

And who flies Virgin Blue anyhow? Well, not surprisingly, they reflect the culture that Virgin Blue stands for. Savvy, smart, tight. So how do you think all the savvy, smart and tight people sitting in the back feel every time they see all those empty red seats? You guessed it. They ask - what the hell are they doing?

So after months of completely empty seats Virgin Blue decides to give their best customers a taste. So they upgrade their gold Velocity members. But hang on a minute. We’ll only upgrade you if you haven’t invested the extra $30 for the blue zone seats that give you a couple of inches more room. Go figure the logic of that one.

The attempt to become a ‘new world carrier’ (whatever that means) has clearly taken Virgin Blue away from its strategic roots of simplicity and it seems that Virgin Blue believes that it is powerful enough to break the first rule of marketing – ‘deliver what the market wants’. The airline seems to believe that it is smart enough and has a strong enough brand to create a market where no market exists.

Those savvy, smart and tight small business types abhor waste. If Virgin Blue really believes they can make a market for their half baked premium offer it will only be because they drive demand into the seats and get their high usage repeat flyers addicted to the ease of the pointy end and the little bit of extra room that comes with it. Right now all they see is waste. Virgin Blue should be upgrading every premium flyer so those seats are full. They will get used to the experience and when they start to sell (because over time the justification for the silly prices will emerge) then competition will see the revenue emerge.

In fact, the whole Virgin Blue conversation depresses me. So much potential and opportunity being squandered. Maybe they  should set up a ‘guests advisory board’. A little common sense and market insight from their most dedicated flyers could save them so much pain.

There is, however, one saving grace. At least their competition is Qantas. Having stepped off a 400 series you start to realise how nice it is to fly in a 737NG. Virgin Blue’s crew knew what they were going to be paid when they signed on. They’re in the majority happy for the job. Many of Qantas’ crew are just nasty and snarly that the good old days have gone. And while winter did deliver me 14 sectors on the trot where I was over half an hour late with Virgin Blue, not one of them was maintence related. As we huff and puff and shuddered down the runway in the 400 I, like many of the passengers, undoubtedly gave more than a thought to whether Geoff Dixon’s rush to profit - and Asian maintence - would affect if I got home safely.

Go Virgin Blue. There are lots of us out their rooting for you.

Cirrus Flies in: Cessna Lands Downtown

Over the past couple of months I’ve attended a couple of events that have convinced me that in little ways the GA sector in Australia is showing some signs of starting to understand the importance of getting amongst its clients and of leveraging off the bonhomie that is such an important part of flying.

I often comment to people when talking about flying that I’ve rarely met a pilot that I didn’t like. Pilots are typically interesting characters with a deep and endearing love of the amazing capacity of our machines to break the bonds of the earth and soar free, allowing us to bend time and be where we want to with ease and the freedom to select when. They all seem to love the privilege that comes with being able to fly and, across the board, they are committed learners who constantly look to improve themselves.

I spent a day at the Southport Flying Club at the Cirrus Pilots’ Association fly in. The club was full as a goog of committed Cirrus owners and with 20 plus aircraft sitting on the ramp the place was more alive than I’ve seen it in many a year. Interestingly the weather was miserable with a 1500ft overcast and drizzling rain. Which reminds us that Cirrus pilots are very likely to have an instrument rating and to regard their aircraft as effective transport, rather than a toy to be used on a fine Sunday afternoon for a joy ride.

It was a very interesting day of education with safety naturally a strong theme, as well as lots of good education provided by the various suppliers of equipment to the aircraft. What was clear was the very strong camaraderie of the group. The other thing that I found interesting was the contrast between the very utilitarian approach to the fly in and the sort of over the top luxury that pervades a competitor for the discretionary flying dollar that I experienced at a Riviera owners’ event. Now it might be different in the US for a Cirrus event of this type where the event is probably supported by the manufacturer, as Riviera does for their events in Australia.

People that can put their hand in their pocket for the half million dollars plus needed to fly one of these plastic pocket rockets are used to a little luxury and, to the outsider peering in, the desire to be part of an exclusive group is an important driver. This is a different world to the hardcore pilots that used to make up the cohort and who did their time in clapped out old pre-gap trainers. Many of these pilots learned in their own aircraft and may well struggle if you took away all the delightful bells of the glass before them. This hardly matters, as why would you ever give up the safety and integration of glass for steam gauges unless you had to?

I enjoyed an interesting hour exploring the future of Cirrus with John Bingham, Cirrus’ President of International. John understands service and luxury having previous headed sales for Rolls Royce in the US.

He’s a cagey bugger. Well trained and with a capacity to stay absolutely on message, John managed to completely avoid giving away anything about the future development of the aircraft. And I tried. I pushed, cajoled and suggested. He stayed right on script. No matter how hard I pushed about the inadequacy of the

Avidyne panel compared to a fully integrated Garmin G1000 he gave nothing away. Two weeks later the Perspective was announced. (More on that when the first aircraft arrives).

One thing that was clear is that Cirrus is continuing to stay on the edge as a leading innovator in the market by poaching great quality people from other industries and have them bring their best skills to bear upon the development of the Cirrus. Clearly Perspective differentiates the Cirrus from its rivals, with a ‘second to market’ approach which means that the installation is superbly integrated and adds simple but powerful innovations like the ‘straight and level’ button that can be pushed anytime to simply level the wings and give a disoriented pilot time to sort themselves out.

At the other end of the GA scale I attended the opening of the world first Cessna Shop by Aeromil Pacific in the Sydney CBD. The event, attended by better than a hundred guests, celebrated this first ever attempt to bring aviation into the middle of the market that can most benefit from the utility that private aircraft travel can bring.

While the clear target for this store is the full suite of jet solutions from jet sales through to charter, and even merchandise, the opportunity to show off the full line of Cessna product is unprecedented. It is once again a great example of how for GA to thrive in Australia it has to move into a relationship with the people who can afford to use it effectively. I hope the Cessna store is fantastically successful.

Back in the Cockpit

As we crossed the border into Victoria and looked beyond the high country, the extent to which the south east of the continent can be effected by fog became obvious. It was a little before 9 am and the capacity of the turbo at altitude to deliver 200 knots means you can really chew up the airways. It was amazing to realise how much country we’d covered. The real difference of course is that you see it all. In one of those big kerosene burning commercial tubes the experience is very much of being inside with a lot of people. In a lighty, the experience is of being part of the sky you occupy.

The fog politely began to recede and from behind it appeared Latrobe Regional. We landed about 10 am with plenty of time to spare before the ceremony started. The hangar quickly filled with people. After much waiting for Trade Minister Simon Crean to arrive, (the Challenger had been kept on the ground by the fog in Canberra), the proceedings started. When David finally presented the type certificate to Gippsland Aviation a circle was complete. A journey that started nearly 40 years before was closed when one of the few Australian type certificates came back after a period of care by one of the world’s biggest aviation to rest in Australian hands.

The Nomad will be put back into production by Gippsland. As we toured the facilities it was patently obvious that Gippsland is one of those rare places where common sense rules. Simple, logical and conservative approaches rule throughout the factory. Good engineering is celebrated and the momentum of it has built. The Nomad will require the scaling up and probably a more sophisticated approach to business but it will undoubtedly emerge a slightly better aircraft for every common sense innovation that will emerge.

With the launch customer being Curry Kenny Aviation it will be going into the hands of another great Australian. Grant Kenny, who has built a powerful aviation conglomerate off a good common sense approach to finding profitable niches, building a great team and then generating scale, sees the Nomad as filling a niche is the market for which he can find great uses. While the future of the Nomad is by no means assured, it rests in safe hands.

And who knows, maybe the change to the Labor Government will result in greater focus and recognition for the part that general aviation plays in a strong and thriving regional economy. One of the things that Simon Crean shared with me in our chat was quite profound as to why we should at least be hopeful. And I quote, “Rod, if you think we’re not going to take some action to create change after 12 years of opposition you don’t understand the energy the Government has to spend”.

I had naturally been bending the Minister’s ear on the shortfalls in government stimulation for general aviation. His view was simple. The government wants good ideas. It doesn’t believe that it has all the answers but it does believe it can make a difference. His encouragement was that we (the aviation community) should be making submissions and building relationships. And he’s right.

The flight back suffered the fate of all northerly trips. It was a little longer at a smidge under five hours and ended with an IFR approach to minimums. It still put us on the ground a little after 6 pm. It was a great day flying, to see a great moment for general aviation in Australia and it could have only happened with the help of light aircraft, a pilot’s license and the love of flying.