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Remote aerodromes are the lifelines to Australia's isolated communities,
but they impose
demanding operational problems
on pilots, managers
and aerodrome operators.
The challenges are many and varied -
wildlife, extremes of weather,
mainly unsealed airstrips and unforgiving terrain.
Thousands of remote airstrips like this one dot Australia,
from the dead centre to the coast,
but where are they?
It's quite remarkable if you think about it,
but half of Australia is considered remote.
This represents a huge area -
about four million square kilometres.
In this program
we're going to give you a taste of what it's like
to fly in remote Australia.
We'll meet some of the people who fly there
and the communities they serve.
We'll look at some of the operational problems
facing pilots and aerodrome owners
and also get some good advice from those who know
on how to stay safe and keep the vital air links open.
MAN: We need an aerodrome, especially during the wet season,
to get our mail,
which comes once a week,
and also our freight.
MAN 2: Well, we get mail in here twice a week
and for our emergency services
like the Flying Doctor,
which we use quite often here.
JEFF WATSON: A cyclone lashes the Top End,
its ferocity shutting down most operations across the region.
Torrential rain makes many airstrips unusable
and even if they were open,
rain and high winds would ground aircraft.
While the big wet causes headaches, the dry poses its own problems.
Dust in the air whipped up by strong winds
cuts visibility and makes windsocks difficult to see,
erosion damages runways
and the dust on the ground can disguise potholes.
MAN: When it rains, it comes in such deluges
that it just washes everything away.
The alternative when it dries out
is it simply blows away.
So you get all forms -
you'll get wind-blown hollows,
you'll get gutters and scours from rains
and then you get the added things like at the wet season,
the ants will come along and they build ant hills everywhere
and they grow at a phenomenal rate, as do the natural vegetation.
Once it rains, everything grows at a phenomenal rate.
You wouldn't believe it. Like, feet in a couple of weeks.
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JEFF WATSON: To the outback aviator,
unrestrained animals are a big danger.
They can cause a serious accident
if they wander across an aerodrome at the wrong time.
The biggest problems is dogs, camels
and kids on the airstrip here
in their motor cars,
but, yeah, mostly camels.
Most pilots know to buzz the strip before they come in.
The camels pose a pretty big risk to a plane when it's landing mostly.
Yeah, that's about it here.
But with fences, they damage fences as well.
They're very hard to keep out
and very hard to keep in if you want to do that as well.
They're just very hard on fences, yeah.
MAN: The main hazards are definitely cattle,
the general surface, especially during the wet season -
a lot of the strips sort of get washed away -
ill-defined landing areas through lack of cones
and no windsocks.
They're sort of the general things.
MAN 2: Cattle on an airstrip is a big issue.
Then you've got the added
complication of not just the cattle,
but the remnants of...
If it is soft, they put hoof-prints into the mud.
Aerodrome operators face an uphill battle
keeping their facilities up to scratch.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has guidelines
covering aeroplane landing areas and standards for aerodromes.
These include
a minimum runway width of 10 metres
and a minimum runway strip width
of 30 metres -
dimensions vary according to the aircraft weight
and whether the aerodrome is used for day or night operations -
a longitudinal slope between
the runway ends of not more than 2%,
a transverse slope between
the extreme ends of the runway strip
of no more than 2.5%
and both ends of the runway
approach and take-off areas
above a 5% slope
should be clear of objects.
An important consideration for safety
is the provision of a runway strip on each side of the runway.
The runway strip should be graded to a condition
that ensures minimal damage to an aeroplane
which might run off a runway during take-off or landing,
say, following a tyre blow-out or loss of directional control.
Outside the runway strips,
there could be ungraded fly-over areas.
These should be free of tree stumps, large rocks or any other obstacles.
Where extended operations are expected to be conducted
at a landing area,
the owner/operator should provide markings or markers
similar to those found at licensed or certified aerodromes.
Runway markers such as cones
should be constructed of material unlikely to damage the aircraft.
MAN: As you approach the airfield,
usually the first thing you're looking for
is the wind direction indicator
and if there's a cleared area around the windsock,
it provides a bit of a contrast
between the windsock and the background
and you can pick up the wind direction much easier.
In addition to the cleared area
around the windsock,
you have not only the runway
that needs to be clear,
but the runway strip.
That gives us a bit of warning if there's livestock coming in.
We can see them approaching.
Also, it gives nice clean airflow round the airstrip
to reduce the windshear
and a clear actual runway strip
so that you can identify things like ant hills
and anything that may have blown onto the strip
or been left behind by passing stock.
JEFF WATSON: For the aerodrome operators,
maintaining their strips is a very substantial and year-round challenge
and is particularly difficult in the wet season.
It takes lots of good old Aussie bush engineering
to keep the strips operational.
I've got a bulldozer and I've got a blade on the back of the tractor
and a tyre drag made out of big scraper tyres.
MAN: Just cutting grass mainly in the wet.
In the dry,
just do a bit of patch-up and that.
But on the runway,
on take-off,
that's where we have most of the problems.
Like, everything's sand there
and just revving the engine, it blows all the sand out.
Day in, day out, we always try to fill it back in again,
try to grow some grass.
Commercial air operators face an ongoing battle
to balance financial viability
against the need to provide the highest possible level of safety.
In remote regions, the difficulties are greater.
The keys to success include proper planning and communication
as well as forging close links to aerodrome operators and customers.
Since it was established in 1928,
the Royal Flying Doctor Service
has learnt a thing or two about outback aviation
and sets the standard for safety and efficiency.
In its lifesaving mercy dashes into remote regions,
the RFDS also has to protect its pilots and medical staff.
MAN: If you're doing something very unusual
like, for example, out of our Mount Isa base
and you're called to a black soil strip in the middle of the night,
thunderstorms around, been a cyclone in the wet season,
there are particular risks that you must not only identify,
but you have to defeat those risks.
The other risk,
which is a more insidious risk,
is the risk that's involved with apathy -
that is, "Same old, same old.
"We're doing the same thing day after day.
"This is routine, like driving to work."
But people have accidents driving to work.
So you have to have a constant process
of being curious about just what it is that you're doing
and continually looking under the bushes for risk.
Night-time operations produces for all of us
a particular set of challenges.
Many of the visual cues that we rely on during the daytime
are just not present
and the risk of controlled flight into terrain -
the classic CFIT accident -
is certainly enhanced by night as opposed to day operations.
So, again, we apply the same principle -
we train and overtrain, we check and overcheck
for night operations.
We occasionally land to flares.
Occasionally we have the requirement
for mercy flights to land under car headlights.
So we produce the rules, the protocols to all the constituents
about how you set up the cars,
how you set up the wind indications
and how you operate
and we formally train our pilots
and we formally check them in to those sorts of places.
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Good preparation and planning
are vitally important for safety in all forms of flying,
but even more so in remote areas
where the potential hazards are many and the conditions often extreme.
Pilots need an intimate knowledge of their operating environment
and they need to be in close communication
with aerodrome operators, other pilots and the weather bureau.
Proper planning starts on the ground and continues throughout the flight,
including the landing phase where pilots must be especially alert.
GARETH ROGERS: Definitely when landing at these strips
you should do a precautionary search
and when you're doing it, you should always be aware
that there are going to be trees on the side of the runway
maybe up to 50 feet high
as well as the windsock pole.
When doing the search,
things you're looking for
are tracks on the strip.
It's, obviously, the weather that affects the strips the most out here
and the owner might have come out
and run up and down the strip with his car -
you'll be able to tell where it's most damp by the tracks.
You're also looking for things like cattle movement.
A lot of these strips aren't fenced
and there's often cattle hidden off into the bushes.
They might get startled by your fly-by
and then come out as you're coming in to land.
So when you're doing the fly-by,
it's always worth keeping an eye on both sides of the strip,
but especially where you're going to land.
The strips themselves often get soggy at both ends
so when you're coming in to land and you have to turn around
it's always a smart idea to have more r.p.m. on than usual.
That way, you won't get bogged.
We do a lot of training
and we like to train the pilot
in to a particular strip,
let them walk up and down it,
have a look at the obstacles, have a look at the condition,
have a look at where the ruts might start to form
and go from there.
JEFF WATSON: Out here, pilots and airstrip owners and operators
need to stay in touch
for updates on weather and the condition of the strips.
Yeah, morning, Gareth. How are you, mate?
Yeah, look, it's a bit wet here at the moment.
You're due in at about 10 o'clock.
If you could leave it till at least midday,
give it a chance to get a bit of sun on it...
We had 38 mil of rain last night.
JEFF WATSON: The Mission Aviation Fellowship
is another organisation
with vast experience of operating in remote areas -
not just in Australia, but all over the world.
Preparation, planning is a big thing.
Know where you're going.
Know what the conditions
of the airstrips are.
Try and get that sort of information as best you can.
Have fuel reserves to go somewhere else if need be
if you get over the top and find that the aerodrome is unserviceable.
Be trained to be able to go into short airstrips.
You know, flying around Bankstown's fine,
but also you need to get training
into going in to and out of gravel airstrips
and especially short airstrips
and being able to fly the aircraft to its performance limits.
And operators need to choose the appropriate aircraft for the job.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service echoes these views.
The service's long history in the outback
has generated a formidable corporate knowledge
of air operations in remote areas
and this has created an operational philosophy
based on three guiding principles.
RICK DAVIES: You must have a very, very good corporate knowledge
of all the destinations that you wish to operate
and that is the physical dimensions of length and width
and approach and departure splays,
its lighting facilities and particularly the surface conditions
and you have to be proactive in keeping that knowledge current.
You must check with aerodrome operators,
you must check with property owners -
if anything changes, you're told about it.
You must use all the means available to you
to keep your knowledge up-to-date -
satellite phones, UHF, whatever -
and before you operate into a rural or remote aerodrome
or an airstrip or any sort of facility,
you must go out and gather all the information
that's possibly available to you
on the destination.
That's really important.
The second basic principle...
And we operate to hundreds of different destinations
varying from a sophisticated facility like here in Brisbane
to very primitive airfields
at pastoral holdings and remote Aboriginal communities
and mining sites.
You must have a rigid check and training system.
You must have absolute quality assurance
that your pilots are capable of going into these places,
they understand the risks
and you must practise, practise, practise.
You must overtrain and you must overcheck.
And the third element
is that one should absolutely encourage all your constituents -
those people who are providing facilities -
to strive for excellence
in providing the best possible facility they can for safety.
They're the three points that we would come back to every time.
JEFF WATSON: Operators cram vital information
into airfield directories -
precious resources for both existing and new pilots.
Even seemingly trivial data could one day save a pilot's life.
RICK DAVIES: We have the equivalent -
an internal document called our Airfield Directory,
and that gives all the information
about the physical characteristics of the destination, but a lot more -
any specific requirements,
should you lose an engine after take-off, the escape routes,
any particular peculiarities about a destination,
high ground, obstacles in the circling area, escape routes,
what's written on the roof of the house,
what the UHF frequency is, what the telephone number is,
what the best alternate is, the next property,
whether you can use it after so many points of rain.
All that sort of information has to be gathered,
but, more importantly, it has to be kept up to date.
So there you have it,
a brief look at what it's like to fly in remote Australia -
difficult, demanding and unpredictable,
but for many pilots, highly satisfying
and the best flying experience of their lives.
If you're operating a bush aerodrome,
upkeep, markings and good communication are critical.
For pilots, remote area operations
are in many ways a world of their own,
but the fundamentals apply
no matter what kind of flying we're talking about -
preparation, planning, training,
honing skills and setting high standards.