President’s Editorial

Hello Members

We are now one year into COVID and an extended period of uncertainty in our working, family and recreational lives. In February we had our second lockdown in the Perth and Peel regions, and the Club again closed its doors – fortunately this time only for a week. It was very sad to see China Southern Flying College cease operations, due in part to restrictions on international students. As much as we may sometimes have expressed feigned or real frustration at indecipherable radio calls from some of the students, this college was still part of our aviation community.

Despite all of this, RACWA is having a successful year in both club activities and pilot training.

Flying hours are 10 per cent ahead of forecast, most notably in club training and club flying. Maybe some foregone expenditure in overseas holidays is being redirected into recreational flying.

Indeed, recreational flying seems to be having something of a renaissance and this is being reflected in increases in participation in club flying competitions and events, and the regular fly ins such as the monthly Bunbury and Busselton Breakfasts. Our last New Members Welcome (described on page 12) introduced several very enthusiastic new recreational pilots and their families to the club.

With commercial training, some very hard work put in by our CEO and his staff during 2020 has paid off with the Western Australian Aviation College gaining eligibility for VET Student Loans. This means that WAAC students can now obtain loans from the Commonwealth Government to cover the fees for commercial training.

Enrolments in WAAC in January were consequently at their highest level for several years and there is a strong level of interest from prospective students that will see a similarly high intake mid-year.

The strong flying results have resulted in an improvement in current financial performance, and the increased enrolments for WAAC provide a greater degree of commercial certainty. All of this allows us to turn our minds to the future.

The Committee is very conscious of the perception amongst many club members and the broader community of recreational aviators that RACWA has for some years been focused on commercial training to the detriment of club spirit, membership and participation. This perception has some justification as for the past several years there was, by necessity, a commitment of management and financial resources to commercial operations as a means of recovery from a period of relative financial difficulty.

We have now, fortunately and thankfully, emerged from this period and are in a position to tackle this situation.

Your Committee will be thinking hard over the next few months about how we want the club to develop over the next five years. Not only the services that we can offer members, but how we can recapture the essence of a club of passionate aviators. We are thinking very broadly about such matters as the amenity and aesthetic of the club facilities; the training and other services we offer to pilots and aircraft owners; and how we can attract a more diverse membership and participation, including our families and the many community members that have an interest in aviation but are not pilots.

I look forward to sharing a new club vision and strategy with you in the near future. In the meantime, if you have ideas to contribute to the Committee’s work, please collar me or another committee member and give us the benefit of your experience and insight.

Happy and safe flying.