Presidents Column
Good morning folks, I trust you are keeping safe and sane in the present Covid calamity. Have you got through your list of jobs yet, mine does not seem any shorter since my beloved has been quietly adding to the bottom….. Level 3 will hopefully be upon us next week. However, this does not seem to give us many more freedoms, just gets a whole lot of us back to work which will be good news.
A number of members have asked me if we can help in any way, eg carrying essential supplies around the country. We have thought about this and appreciate the sentiment. However, the essential freight services are working well and the major risk for our community is light aircraft unintentionally carrying the virus between regions. At this stage the best place for our aircraft is in their hangars.
Your Exec committee has had plenty of time to meet, via Zoom, We have sorted out where we are going for the next year. Once again we have divided our group into workstreams.
Number one is the newly named ‘Regulatory Working Group’ which is led by Steve Horne, assisted by Chris Hoffman, Andrew Hintz and myself. Ian Andrews is a key advisor to this group. The work has been divided into three groups, firstly IFR, ADSB, ACAG etc, secondly medical, with our primary task now working with IAOPA on their submission to ICAO (the international aviation body) to get recognition of our new medical standard around the world. Thirdly a previously under emphasised group we are calling ‘Mechanical and maintenance’. Watch this space for some fireworks.
Number two is Social, led by Murray Paterson with Ian Sinclair and Geoff van Asch they will be bringing flying activity as soon as we get the green light. At present we are still planning to run ‘Charlie Drapers’ Canterbury flyin in the spring and we have the Omarama winter flyin on hold, we have options for dates and will work to get this happening when there is a lightening of our lockdown travel restrictions.
Number three is our Safety Officers, maybe not all at once, but their presence will be felt at all our flyins. Ivor Yockney will lead this assisted by Sue Kronfeld and David Paterson (seconded). They have already had a meeting and the 5th iteration of our safety template is in pipeline now.
Don Ryder is leading our ‘Membership and Communications’ group and will be ably assisted by all the exec committee and all the membership – he needs articles and photos from our activities, not just AOPA outings, but the other aviation adventures we get up to as well. Please put pen to paper or sort out those photos and give us a bit of background and we will get them published in one of our avenues. Plus, don’t just buy discounted VNC map books for your friends, talk to them about all the other benefits of AOPA-NZ and get them to join.
Lastly, we are going to get on and finalise our ‘Digital Review’. Ian Sinclair is going to put a paper together summarising his thoughts and all the research and interviews we have recently done in this area. Exec will go over this with a ‘fine tooth comb’. Once we are happy, we will get a ‘suitably qualified independent person’ to review the paper and make suggestions. Then and only then, the implementation process will begin. If any member knows of a ‘suitably qualified person’ who works in the digital review field preferably with an aviation interest, I would like to hear from them.
As always, we love to hear from you with your suggestions, comments complementary or critical so feel free to pick up the phone or get the email flowing and let us make 2020 a productive year for AOPA.
Best wishes
Steve Brown
President.
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