SPORTPILOT
2022 -
TAKE TWO As we come to the end of another disrupted year, one can hope that 2022 will see a lot more opportunity for committing to aviation.
MATT BOUTTELL CEO As a 30 year industry veteran, Matt joined RAAus as CEO in January 2021. He is a passionate advocate of RAAus and for keeping aviation accessible for Australians. ceo@raaus.com.au
12
For the team and me at RAAus, I suspect that much of our work in 2022 will be focused on enabling the newly minted privileges we’ll be obtaining, which are the long awaited increase in maximum take off weight and, hopefully, controlled airspace access. These privileges will offer many of us increased operational flexibility, and I’ll share with you an example of why this is the case. Prior to the lockdown in the ACT, Mick Monck (RAAus Chair) and
I took a day off and went for a jaunt in my Grumman Tiger. Our plan was to fly from Canberra to Camden, grab some fuel, then fly up to Barrenjoey Head before tracking for a Sydney Scenic over the harbour, exiting through the heads and descending into Victor One before meandering our way back to Canberra. Of course, this is a VH-registered aircraft that has an MTOW of 1090kgs, and I hold a PPL with CTA access already. If the weather or operational conditions changed, or in this case,