What's in a Name?
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I'm surprised by the attitude of the GFA against the CASA license proposal.
This is particularly so as the Gliding community (and
consequently GFA) struggles to get new members and has trouble keeping
them.
One of the advantages of the CASA proposal is that it will use the word
'license' on one of our qualifications. This is important as it helps to
attract people into the sport and helps to keep them in the sport. This is
particularly true where we loose large numbers of people after going
solo.
Without the license the solo becomes the
main goal. Wording such as C certificate etc mean nothing to the man on
the street and consequently don't provide sufficiently appealing goals to make the large investment and time and
money worthwhile. Gaining some sort of Glider Pilot License is a far more
appealing and desirable goal. By the time they reach this goal they should
be doing cross country and hopefully getting the bug for
competition.
The lack of license in our sport provides a
bad impression to the outside world. It indicates a lack of professionalism. Just how much
so was indicated recently by the following experience.
I mentioned in passing to a friend/acquaintance
(table tennis opponent) that I did gliding. He was very interested but
didn't know what gliding was (as opposed to hang gliding etc). It
turned out that he and his brother had wanted to do some hang gliding but
his brothers wife had put her foot down as she considered it
too dangerous. Proper planes would have been OK but not hang
gliders. As I had recently
regained passenger and backseat ratings following a long absence from gliding I
was keen to take them up. My club could do with some extra members and
they were keen to do some aviation..
I
explained that these were proper planes and flown the same way as planes
etc. All was going well until he asked if I had a license.
Explaining that the sport didn't have licenses changed the whole thing. No
longer was there an impression that we were proper pilots or that we flew proper
planes.
The same is also seen in the International
Gliding community. In some countries Australian pilots are unable to
get their qualifications recognized simply because the word 'License'
doesn't appear in their qualifications.
The Gliding Community and the GFA will have
a major problem if CASA goes ahead with the proposal with other aviation sports
but leaves out gliding. As the other sports will have a common license
(just different endorsements as they go from one to the other) there will be an
appearance that gliding experience doesn't count. In fact this may be more
than just appearance.
Combine this with the fact
that the other sports have licenses that are recognized by the
International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and gliding will not be very
appealing.
Ken
Dawber
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ph 0409
790 802
