In the Wake of the Pandemic
General aviation operations have always been a mixed bag of personal and business fortunes (or misfortunes). In attempting to provide an overview of what COVID has done to that mixed bag, well, it appears, there’s the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.
Australia is a big country; girt by sea. Two years of COVID relentlessly battering the system, has exposed just how big, and how girt, it really is, and how much we rely on the aviation network to keep this big country connected and moving.
But did the country rely on aviation, or general aviation? With federal financial assistance as a measure, you’d be inclined to believe it was the airline industry. Sure, it was gravely ill, but was the government handing money to an unconscious patient to spend whilst all the doctors, nurses, cleaners, and healthcare workers ploughed on, working double shifts without so much as a pay rise?
Airlines have thus far received $5.2 billion in federal assistance with some schemes continuing until the end of March. General aviation, aside from Jobkeeper and, for some organisations, the Booster Apprenticeship Scheme, essentially not a cent, unless you count the airport upgrade program.
Mostly left to its own devices for two years, general aviation has survived. But, it appears, some of the festering, Bandaid-ed sores already inherent in the system have become bleedingly obvious gaping wounds to all in the
